As a colleague mentioned in the run-up to this story, it's weird to think that Cary Joji Fukunaga has been done with his James Bond movie for more than a year at this point. He's kept busy, of course, prepping the high-profile and high-flying limited series Masters of the Air for Apple in between games of Death Stranding. And now, the acclaimed filmmaker has signed on to a new feature, one that may be familiar to comic book fans.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Fukunaga is set to direct a feature adaptation of Image's cyberpunk comic book Tokyo Ghost for Legendary. The comic hails from Rick Remender and Sean Murphy, and Remender will write the script. He also created the popular comic book The Last Days of American Crime, which was turned into a way-too-long Netflix movie last year.
Tokyo Ghost is set in nearly 70 years in the future -- 2089, to be specific -- and by that time, humanity has become fully addicted to technology and entertainment in order to escape the hardships of reality. The story follows constables Debbie Decay and Led Dent, who work as peacekeepers in the Isles of Los Angeles, where they're given a job that will take them to the last tech-free country on Earth -- the garden nation of Tokyo.
Fukunaga will produce Tokyo Ghost under his Parliament of Owls banner along with Hayden Lautenbach, while former Legendary executive Jon Silk will produce via his new production company Silk Mass.
Remender previously worked with the Russo brothers on the SyFy series Deadly Class, and his series Fear Agent is currently in development at Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's company Point Grey. Meanwhile, Murphy's Chrononauts comic is in development at Netflix.
Fukunaga famously directed Season 1 of True Detective before landing the coveted Bond gig directing Daniel Craig's final outing as 007 in No Time to Die, which is now slated to hit theaters in October. He's about to direct the first three episodes of Apple's WWII series Masters of the Air, where he'll be working alongside noted cinematographer Adam Arkapaw and some guy named Steven Spielberg. That big-budget series -- a companion piece of sorts to HBO's Band of Brothers -- will star Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Anthony Boyle. Fukunaga previously directed Sin Nombre, Jane Eyre and Netflix's Beasts of No Nation, and he's a producer on the upcoming Mark Wahlberg drama Joe Bell.
Fukunaga also technically wrote 2017's It, but I certainly don't put that movie on him given everything that went down there. He's one of the industry's most exciting filmmakers and if he thinks he can do something interesting with Tokyo Ghost, which I've never heard of before today, then I'm down to check it out, so kudos to Legendary on the smart hire.