"Koei has never made a movie-licensed game before -- it\'s generally preferred to work with subject matter at least 500 years old, and often two or three times that. Perhaps it was just waiting for the right script, though, a script its creators could help write.
Today, Koei announced that Kou Shibusawa, creator of the Nobunaga\'s Ambition series, will collaborate on the completion of an unfinished script by film legend Akira Kurosawa, while also directing a videogame based on the resulting movie.
Oni -- the name means "demon" -- is the story of a blond-haired samurai, son of a Japanese lord and a Western woman, fighting in Japan\'s civil wars during the 16th century. The film will be directed by Kurosawa\'s son Hisao (in his film directing debut), while Shibusawa will work with Kurosawa to finish the movie\'s script. The game, meanwhile, will be a "historical action" title with a heavy role-playing component for the successor to Sony\'s current PlayStation 2 console. The total budget for both projects together is estimated at 3 billion yen (about $28 million).
"When reading Hisao Kurosawa\'s script," Shibusawa said at a recent press conference to announce the collaboration, "it gave me the impression of stories like \'Seven Samurai\' and \'The Hidden Fortress\' -- I felt the common DNA between him and Akira Kurosawa."
Shibusawa jokingly said he\'s forbidden to say anything about the capabilities of Sony\'s next-generation console, but he did say he expects to very closely replicate the appearance of the actors from the film in the game.
Over a career lasting more than 50 years, Akira Kurosawa established himself as Japan\'s leading film director. His most famous movies, like Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and The Hidden Fortress, directly inspired Western creations ranging from Sergio Leone\'s "spaghetti westerns" to George Lucas\' Star Wars.
Koei and Kurosawa Production plan to simultaneously release the Oni game and movie some time in 2006. That dovetails neatly with Sony\'s announced timetable for the debut of its next-generation console late in the same year.
Both the game and the film are in the very early stages of production -- auditions for actors to play the two lead roles aren\'t beginning until the first of next month. However, Koei\'s already planning to develop the property into many more different forms of media, so we\'ll see how the project grows and proliferates over the coming year."
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