90-year-old Kon Ichikawa back behind the camera

[Don Brown]

90-year-old Kon Ichikawa is to return to the director's chair to remake his 
own "Inugami-ke no Ichizoku" with the original film's star Koji Ishizaka. 

Based on the novel of the same name by Seishi Yokomizo, "Inugami-ke no 
Ichizoku" was released in 1976 and made 1,560,000,000 at the domestic box 
office (as the average ticket price at the time was only 852 yen, that 
works out at 2,400,000,000 yen when converted in line with today's average 
ticket price of 1300 yen). The team of director Ichikawa and actor Ishizaka 
went on to produce four more adaptations of Yokomizo's books: "Akuma no 
Temariuta" (1977), "Gokumonto" (1977), "Jo-oh-bachi" (1978) and "Byoinzaka 
no Kubikukuri no Ie" (1979).

"We won't push Ichikawa, so the usual shooting period of around two months 
will be doubled," said Kadokawa Pictures President Kazuo Kuroi. The 
production budget for the original version was 205 million yen, but with 
the extra filming time the cost of the remake could rise to 700,000,000 yen 
(around US$6,000,000). 

Ichikawa was initially approached by horror film producer Taka Ichise 
("Ring," "Juon" etc.) to gauge his interest in directing a remake. After 
watching the original on video and thinking it over for two days, he 
decided to join the project.

"As opposed to thirty years ago, you can now do lots of interesting things 
with CG and other technology, so I'd like to rejuvenate and become involved 
in this era," he said.

The story will remain mostly unchanged, but Ichikawa is currently 
re-editing the screenplay in order to cut the running time by around twenty 
minutes to under two hours. 

Ishizaka (64), who returns to the role of Kosuke Kindaichi for the first 
time in 27 years, will be bringing back the character's trademark messy 
long-haired, dandruff-laden look that he himself created. For the original 
version of "Inugami-ke no Ichizoku," Ishizaka approached cosmetics giant 
Shiseido for help in realizing Kindaichi's disheveled appearance as 
described in Yokomizo's book, but was turned away. 

"They refused, saying "we are a company that makes things beautiful." So I 
came up with the idea of grinding breadcrumbs and rubbing them into my hair 
to resemble dandruff. Whenever I washed my hair the breadcrumbs would swell 
up, so during the latter half of the shoot I didn't bother to wash it 
anymore."

"We can't forget the dandruff this time either, so I'm preparing my own 
stock of breadcrumbs."

Haruki Kadokawa, who masterminded the 1976 production and devised its 
revolutionary television advertising campaigns and publishing tie-ups, 
broke ties with publishing company Kadokawa Shoten in 1993, so this time 
the film will be remade as "a Kadokawa film by Kadokawa Shoten."

Filming begins this April, and distributors Toho have scheduled the film's 
release for the first half of 2007. 

Sources:
http://www.sanspo.com/geino/top/gt200601/gt2006012801.html
http://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/hl?a=20060128-00000019-spn-ent