0_MonsterAnimeMainVisual

Some seriously appetite whetting news via Deadline: HBO have teamed up with none other than scare master extraordinaire, Guillermo Del Toro, to adapt Naoki Urasawa’s 18 volume manga series, Monster.

Urasawa’s story follows a brilliant young doctor, Kenzo Tenma, who risks his reputation, career and fiancee when he chooses to save the lives of two young twins, over treating a rich mayor. The survivors of a horrific massacre, the twins disappear soon after, leaving a murderous trail in their wake: a trail that Tenma picks up again in bloody fashion ten years later.

Previously adapted as a 74 episode anime on Japanese channel NTV in 2004/5, Del Toro’s original intention was to re-make Monster into a film for New Line, a plan that was scrapped when the project continued to grow to the point where it was no longer conceivable as feature length movie, leading him down the TV show route.

Del Toro will be sharing co-writer duties on the potential series with Stephen Thompson (of Dr Who, Sherlock fame) and is on board to direct the pilot episode himself. I have to admit, while I’m a huge fan of Del Toro and unfamiliar with this manga,  it does sound more like your traditional crime, serial killer tale than his usual actual monster/creature fare (Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim), which makes me curious to see how he handles this.

Guillermo del Toro

(via Deadline)

6 COMMENTS

  1. Its been a while since I read it but I remember it not being at all a traditional serial killer story. As for Del Toro-his film the Devils Backbone shows he can do a damn fine film without having to rely on too much special effects or make up effects. I need to watch that film again…

  2. I’m not the biggest manga reader, but I’ll be picking up the first volume of this at least- it does sound a fab pairing: fingers crossed it gets green-lit…

  3. 0_0 This is going to be amazing.

    Now who do I have to sell my silicon soul to in order to get Del Toro to have an far future cyberpunk series based on the manga Blame! ? I remember being on a forum back when the first Hellboy was in production and someone asked about the manga artist’s involvement and Del Toro said he was a fan of the artist who was doing a couple of concept sketches of Kronen. Del Toro is quite a well rounded and awesome nerd.

  4. I *love* Urasawa’s work! Urasawa has excellent brush control and compositions while drawing some of the best characters ever. He’s kinda like the Jeff Smith of manga with less fantasy and cartoony style. His stories are really gripping, too. He writes one Hell of a first act and can keep turning up the suspense. I think Urasawa’s stories are a really good fit for del Toro. This can only be awesome.

  5. Given Del Toros aesthetic you would think he would want to adapt Hellsing, so this a bit of a surprise. we’ll see what happens, personally I did not really enjoy Monster because it tried too hard to make the antagonist untouchable a la Japanese melodrama and threw me out of the story.

Comments are closed.