Hitoshi Matsumoto’s latest announced – ‘R-100’
Matsumoto Hitoshi, the popular comedian turned film maker has announced his latest work, ‘R-100’. The title refers to the Japanese film classification system i.e. R-15, R-18, and the director revealed at the press conference “…this was a case where the title came first. When I was doing the press for ‘The Scabbard Samurai’, I came up with an idea: why is there not a movie rated R-80 or R-100? That sounds like fun. It just happened like that and we took it from there.”
The film stars Omori Nao of ‘Ichi the Killer’ and ‘From Up On Poppy Hill’, Terajima Shinobu of ‘Caterpillar’ and fashion model Tominaga Ai, alongside Matsumoto himself.
The film is currently in post-production and will be released in Japan on October 5th. Matsumoto has had success at festivals with his previous films, he started his career in 2007 with ‘Big Man Japan’ which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes, and followed it up with ‘Symbol’ in 2009 and ‘The Scabbard Samurai’ in 2011.
‘R-100’ will be his fourth feature. I was able to ask the director if there has been any development on the Hollywood remake of ‘Big Man Japan’ at which he replied that the script is now being written.
by Christopher O’Keeffe
