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Hiroshi Takahashi's Crows Manga Inspires 3rd Live-Action Film
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
Hiroshi Takahashi's Crows fighting manga is inspiring a new live-action film in 2014. Toshiaki Toyoda (Aoi Haru, Kūchū Teien) will be taking over Takashi Miike position as director for the Crows Explode film, which will take place one month after the end of Crows Zero II.
The new movie will take place at Suzuran Boys' High School after Genji Takiya and Tamao Serizawa have graduated. The film will focus on the new third-year students as they deal with the new first-year students and transfer students at the school. Masahiro Higashide (live-action xxxHOLiC) will play the protagonist — a transfer student named Kaburagi — and Taichi Saotome (Prince of Tennis: Eikoku-shiki Teikyū-jō Kessen!) will play first-year student Ryōhei Kagami, who aims to reach the top of the Suzuran pecking order. Yūya Yagira (Nobody Knows) will play third-year student Toru Gōra, who sits near the "top" of Suzuran.
The film will also star the following cast: Ryō Katsuji, Takanori Iwata, ELLY, Yūya Endō, Shuntarō Yanagi, KENZO, Itsuji Itao, Reina Asami, Saki Takaoka, and Kento Nagayama. Additionally, the following cast members are returning from the previous films: Kyosuke Yabe as Ken Katagiri, Motoki Fukami as Megumi Hayashida, and Tsutomu Takahashi as Takashi Makise.
Crows Zero opened in theaters in Japan in 2007 and its sequel Crows Zero II opened in 2009. The two films were prequels to the original manga, and starred Shun Oguri (Hana Yori Dango, Gokusen) as high school delinquent Genji Takiya. Crows Zero II was set eight months after the first schoolyard-brawl film as Genji faces graduation.
The original Crows manga ran for 26 volumes, and Digital Manga Publishing partially published its sequel manga Worst in English. Crows also inspired a two-episode anime OVA adaptation, the 1994 Koukou Butouden Crows. Tokyo Shock released the Crows Zero film on Blu-ray Disc last year in North America after the film had been previously released in North America on DVD in 2009, and the video label MVM released both Crows Zero and Crows Zero II in the United Kingdom.
Source: Comic Natalie via Manga-News, Nippon Cinema
Update: Director's name corrected. Thanks, Rob Haney
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