A film adaptation of the Phoenix Wright video game series wasn’t too surprising, but the movie took on an interesting spin when the project fell into the hands of director Takashi Miike.  For those unfamiliar with Miike’s diverse body of work, his filmography includes the gruesome Ichi the Killer, the children’s movie The Great Yokai War, and the samurai action flick 13 Assassins.  So what would his take be on the fun and silly Phoenix Wright series?  Judging by these Japanese trailers, he’s staying true to the games. There are colorful witnesses, characters shouting their dramatic evidence reveals, and even throwing holographic exhibits at each other.  It also looks like the “Turnabout Goodbyes” case from the first game is part of the film’s plot.

Hit the jump to check out the Japanese trailers.  Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is due out in Japan on February 11, 2012.

I love the noir genre.  It’s probably my favorite just ahead of westerns.  I love the stark cinematography, the world-weary cynicism and lost causes of the protagonists, and the pulpy accessibility of the stories with the thoughtful subtext simmering underneath.   While we’re bound to get one or two westerns a year, film noir—at least in its classic sense—seems to have disappeared.  I’ve always been puzzled by its absence because great noir doesn’t just transport us to another time, but another world.  Rockstar and Team Bondi’s L.A. Noire not only gives a modern audience a return to the genre, but actually sets them inside the world and lets them traverse a stunning recreation of 1940s Los Angeles.  However, while the aesthetic and the individual crimes scream “noir”, your rigid protagonist Cole Phelps lacks complexity, and the game leaves you wondering why another character wasn’t the lead instead.  The game also employs a questionable interrogation mode, which tries to make use of groundbreaking facial capture technology, but remains stuck in roundabout logic and a little too much guesswork.  But no game is going to let you live noir like L.A. Noire and it’s a case worth working.

In spite of the fact that Japanese director Takashi Miike (Audition) has two films he is currently promoting (13 Assassins and the Cannes premiere Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai), the filmmaker is already filming his next project. In a recent interview at Cannes, Miike (whose has seen some of his previous work criticized for its violent content) revealed to the Huffington Post’s Karin Badt that his next film will have “little blood”, saying:

“It is a very light comedy that I am filming now, a court drama, based on a video game, the Nintendo game DS.”

Although Miike never explicitly confirms it, some on the interwebs are attempting to connect the dots between the filmmaker and the Nintendo DS franchise Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Originally released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance in 2001, the original title was remade and released for the Nintendo DS in 2005 and later spawned a pair of direct sequels. For more on the possible connection, hit the jump.