A collection adaptation of Tawada Yoko’s award-winning novel “The Last Children of Tokyo” is being developed as a global co-production between Japan’s NHK and Taiwan’s Betula Movies and Flash Ahead Leisure, with principal pictures focused for spring 2026.
The mission, directed by Edmund Yeo, who gained greatest director on the Tokyo Worldwide Movie Pageant for “We, the Useless,” takes place in a dystopian Japan the place the aged have stopped ageing, however youngsters face early mortality. The story follows a 108-year-old man caring for his fragile great-grandson in a society that has remoted itself from the world.
The inventive crew contains producer Itagaki Maiko from NHK, who beforehand collaborated with Yeo on his Venice Movie Pageant-premiered quick “Kingyo,” and veteran Taiwan producer Patrick Mao Huang, founding father of Flash Ahead Leisure, recognized for producing Karlovy Fluctuate winner “Pierce” and the Cannes prize-winning “Tiger Stripes.”
The mission is on the Taiwan Artistic Content material Fest (TCCF), the place it’s a part of the Serial Bridges: TAICCA (Taiwan Artistic Content material Company) x Sequence Mania pitches.
“The ebook’s concepts are so unsettling and evocative that they stayed with me,” Yeo informed Selection. “When the worldwide pandemic occurred, the actual world felt nearer and nearer to Tawada’s dystopia.”
The collection expands on Tawada’s authentic work, exploring how Japan reached this state and the implications for its inhabitants. “As audiences observe the journey of a boy and his great-grandfather by way of dystopian Japan, which might typically be absurdly humorous, terrifying and heartbreaking, the collection progressively reveals itself as a multigenerational household saga,” Yeo defined. “In a crumbling world gone mad, love remains to be potential, and so long as we cling dearly to our personal humanity, there’ll all the time be hope. That is the emotion that we wish to seize.”
Producer Ivy Shen Yu-Hua, whose credit embrace the Golden Horse Award-winning “The Sunny Aspect of the Avenue,” confirmed that adaptation rights have been secured from the creator and writer Kodansha. The mission is at present in script improvement, with financing efforts set to start in 2025.
“Reflecting upon the spirit of this mission, which is about folks making an attempt to interrupt free and join with the surface world, that is designed as a global co-production mission, capitalizing on the benefits introduced forth by worldwide co-productions to develop upon the framework of conventional Japanese TV stations,” Shen stated. The producers are in search of further inventive expertise and financiers from Taiwan, Japan and internationally at TCCF.
