Latest in Japanese Manga

The Japanese manga artist and scholar known as Monkey Punch has died at age 81, according to Japanese press reports and confirmed by stateside friends and associates within the art and academic communities. The creator of the popular manga Lupin III was born as Kazuhiko Katō in the village of Kiritappu in Hamanaka in…

EXCLUSIVE: Black Jack is coming to a TV near you. Entertainment One has acquired the worldwide rights to a television series based on the popular Japanese manga. The LA/Toronto-based indie studio, that produces ABC’s Rookie Blue and distributes AMC’s The Walking Dead, plans a possible live action series of the classic…

EXCLUSIVE: One of the industry’s top deal makers, Climan has been named CEO of a new enterprise, All Nippon Entertainment Works (ANEW), that vows to drive the most ambitious effort yet to spread Japan's entertainment to English-speaking audiences. "Japan has long been a cultural epicenter of the world’s most creative…

EXCLUSIVE: Warner Bros has hired Shane Black to direct a live action adaptation of the Japanese manga series Death Note. Black will oversee a script that's being written by Anthony Bagarozzi and Charles Mondry, his accomplices on Doc Savage, a drama he’ll direct for Sony Pictures Entertainment. Dan Lin, Roy Lee, Doug…

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures and Chris Meledandri’s Illumination Entertainment are teaming with Tezuka Productions to turn the Japanese Manga Pluto into a live action/CG hybrid film. Pluto, which married a beloved Japanese cultural figure with the writer Naoki Urasawa and artist Takashi Nagasaki, has sold 8 million…

Director Alexandre Aja has emerged from the Piranha 3D fish tank determined to next sink his teeth into Cobra—The Space Pirate. While not well known in America, the Buichi Terasawa-created Japanese manga was turned into an animated series that was hugely popular across Europe and especially in Aja’s childhood…