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Bloody Monday Manga Creators Draw Inception Film Poster

The creators of the Bloody Monday suspense manga have collaborated on a poster for the live-action Warner Brothers film Inception, which opens in Japan on July 23 (a week after its July 16 launch in the United States). The poster mimics the design of the original poster, which features the film's main characters standing on a warped street. However, the new poster inserts the characters of Bloody Monday.

Bloody Monday's magazine, Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine, shipped on Wednesday with the poster along with an introduction to the film and an interview with the film's main star. The same poster will be displayed for about two weeks in all stores in the major Japanese book chains Maruzen, Bunkyōdō, and Junkudo.

Bloody Monday centers around Fujimaru Takagi, a high school student and genius white-hat hacker who tries to clear his father's name by tracking down the "Bloody Monday" conspiracy. The manga is written by "Ryō Ryūmon," which is one of several pen names of writer Tadashi Agi. Agi wrote the story for the original GetBackers manga (as Yuya Aoki), the original concept of Kindaichi Case Files (as Seimaru Amagi), the story of Tantei Gakuen Q (also as Seimaru Amagi), and the story of Kami no Shizuku under his own name. Kōji Megumi draws the Bloody Monday manga, which inspired two live-action television drama series.  

The film Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio, who has been attached as a producer with the live-action adaptations of two anime franchises: Akira and Ninja Scroll. As written and directed by Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento, The Prestige), Inception revolves around crimes that take place in the human subconscious. The French film site Excessif reports that Nolan has acknowledged the influence of Satoshi Kon's anime adaptation of Yasutaka Tsutsui's Paprika novel, although does not quote him directly:

"Christopher Nolan cites [Paprika] as one of the principal influences and was inspired by its main character to flesh out his character played by Ellen Page, a 'spirit architect' named Ariadne."

Director Wolfgang Petersen (The Neverending Story, Troy, Poseidon) told MTV News in March that he is developing a live-action film version of Paprika.

In a separate development, the Yahoo! Movies website is hosting a prequel comic titled Inception: The Cobol Job. Inception film producer Jordan Goldberg (Batman: Gotham Knight) wrote the comic, and Long Vo, Joe Ng, and Crystal Reid illustrated the comic for Udon Entertainment. Vo worked on several projects in the Street Fighter game franchise (including work as the lead sprite designer for the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix game) and co-founded the Gaia Online social networking site. Ng worked on several comic books related to The Transformers franchise.

Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the Paprika news tip.

Source: Eiga.com

Update: More background information added.