Kitano goes abroad

[Aaron Gerow]

The sports papers, as if traying to make up for the disappointing news of 
Kitano Takeshi's loss at Cannes, presented with big headlines news that 
Office Kitano has made a deal with English producer Jeremy Thomas 
(producer of Oshima's _Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence_, etc.) to produce 
Kitano's next film as a Japanese-English co-production.

The film, tentatively titled _Brother_, will be directed, written, and 
star Kitano as a yakuza who does to L.A. in search of his brother and 
gets mixed up in a drug dealing turf war with black gangs.

Office Kitano and Thomas's Recorded Pictures Company will each put in 50% 
of the 10 million dollar budget and the film will start shooting this 
November, including seven weeks of shooting in LA starting in January.

The project seems fairly certain to go through because Office Kitano has 
been trying for the last two years to clear Kitano's TV appearance 
schedule for the LA shoot.  Previously, Kitano has tended to shoot his 
films with alternating one week of shooting with one week of TV work, but 
this will be impossible for the LA shoot.

Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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