Acclaimed director of TV and music videos Hiro Murai is set to make his feature debut with ‘high-stakes’ action film Bushido, from A24.
When it comes to the land of filmed drama, the samurai is in vogue. FX’s Shōgun series has been picking up lots of acclaim and this year became the first Japanese-language effort to win the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.
Meanwhile, action director extraordinaire Chad Stahelski is also lining up an action-packed samurai adaptation, Ghost Of Tsushima, based on the popular blockbuster PlayStation video game.
We heard around a year ago that arthouse label A24 was looking to shift direction and pick up projects that might be considered more mainstream, with the action genre mentioned at the time the report emerged.
Perhaps Bushido was one of those films, as it has now been revealed that it’s the latest slice of samurai action coming our way.
Bushido is said to be ‘a high-stakes action film set against the backdrop of feudal Japan’ and was first revealed by Deadline.
The project is set to be directed by Hiro Murai in his feature debut. While Murai may not have helmed a feature film before, he’s highly respected for his work on the acclaimed TV series Atlanta, having directed and executive produced parts of the show.
Murai has gone on to work with Atlanta's star Donald Glover in several other instances including directing some of those stylish Childish Gambino music videos you may have seen, not to mention directing his 55-minute Amazon music film Guava Island, co-starring Rihanna, and his Mr And Mrs. Smith TV remake.
The rigid code of honour that the samurai class worked by (known as ‘bushido’), the beautiful and elegant setting not to mention the incredibly-designed armours and costumes mean that samurai films are almost always a treat to watch, even the ones that aren’t that wonderful. Happily though, there are plenty of wonderful ones out there and we’re hoping that A24 and Murai will be adding to that canon when Bushido emerges at an unspecified point in the future.
When we do hear more about this one, we’ll let you know.
