HBO Max and WOWOW have revealed a new image and release date for their upcoming action-thriller series Tokyo Vice. Based on a true story, the series starring Ansel Elgort follows a young American journalist who is sent to chronicle the everyday activities from of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, and ends up uncovering shocking evidence of corruption in the Vice squad. The series premieres exclusively on HBO Max on April 7.
The first-look image reveals a dark setting with Elgort’s Jake Adelstein sitting on a bus next to Ken Watanabe, who plays Hiroto Katagiri, a detective in the organized crime division. They are both surrounded by police officers in full-body armor, and Jake looks (and probably feels) like a fish out of water in many ways.
Tokyo Vice is finally coming to our screens in early April after a long road to completion: the series had its production shut down due to COVID restrictions in early 2020. As production resumed, however, the series found a Japanese co-producing partner in WOWOW, a premium pay-TV broadcaster that bought exhibition rights to the series all over Japan.
When talking about acquiring Tokyo Vice, WOWOW producer Kayo Washio revealed to Deadline his love for the story and the importance of having high production values to tell it:
“Tokyo Vice is a true passion project for me as I’ve had my eyes on the material for quite some time and trusted business relationships with some of the key players involved for an even longer period of time. It is the type of story that deserves and necessitates the pedigree of creative talent assembled to bring it to life. WOWOW is proud to be involved in a series that hits close to home for us, literally, and figuratively, and has such a gifted team bringing it all together. Ultimately, we believe this will be an event series that audiences in Japan, and throughout the world will be hooked into.”
The pilot of Tokyo Vice is directed by acclaimed filmmaker and four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann, who is known for tackling police corruption in many of his films, including Heat and 2006’s Miami Vice. The upcoming series is created and written by J.T. Rogers, a playwright who previously adapted his own play Oslo for the screen. Rogers based Tokyo Vice on the memoir of the same name by journalist Jake Adelstein, played by Elgort on screen. Aside from Elgort and Watanabe, the cast of Tokyo Vice also features Academy Award nominee Rinko Kikuchi (Pacific Rim: Uprising), Rachel Keller (FX's Legion), Ella Rumpf (Raw), Hideaki Ito (Lesson of the Evil), Sho Kasamatsu (The Naked Director), and music star Tomohisa Yamashita (The Head).
The first three episodes of Tokyo Vice premiere on HBO Max on April 7, with two episodes premiering weekly after that. Check out the series' official synopsis here:
Loosely inspired by American journalist Jake Adelstein's non-fiction first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, the crime drama series, filmed on location in Tokyo, captures Adelstein's (played by Ansel Elgort) daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo in the late ‘90s, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem.