Word: nakata
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...York City and Los Angeles and spreads to a dozen cities next month. Soon we'll see an assault of Hollywood remakes of Japanese horror films. The Ring 2, a sequel to the 2002 Naomi Watts thriller that grossed $230 million worldwide, is being directed by Hideo Nakata, who helmed the original Japanese film version. A remake of Nakata's Dark Water, about a woman and her daughter drowning in sorrow and fear, will star Jennifer Connelly; Mechanic is the producer, and Walter Salles (Central Station) is the director. And Ju-on, Japan's top fright franchise (with four episodes...
...year before The Sixth Sense, that Ringu (The Ring) became an Asia-wide smash. Hideo Nakata's movie had a surefire opening (a killer videocassette) and a double climax (our heroine confronts death down a well, and then her boyfriend is murdered when the dead girl in the video crawls out of a TV set). But Nakata, like all good dread auteurs, did more. He created a mood that informed every scene and adhered to the viewer long after the film ended...
Hollywood studios often remake foreign films but rarely with the original directors. Yet Nakata is directing The Ring 2 and Shimizu is remaking Ju-on (as The Grudge). They may well be the first Japanese directors to make major studio films in America. Another Nakata film--Dark Water, his best--is being remade by Walter Salles, with Jennifer Connelly as a mother who gets traumatized and very wet in a haunted apartment building...
...Asian Imports An increasingly popular strategy for winning new fans and selling merchandise is to hire a favorite son with his own loyal following. Japanese imports like Hidoshi Nakata (Bologna) and Shinji Ono (Feyenoord) have helped their European clubs hawk souvenirs and attract Asian tourists. Through the end of last year, midfielder Junichi Inamoto (left) has helped English team Fulham earn $3.7 million in merchandise sales and television rights in Japan...
...been huge hits on screens throughout Asia and on the Western video market. Along with American hits like The Sixth Sense, they have made the coolly creepy a hot genre again. After the surprise success of a U.S. remake of The Ring in 2002, three more U.S. versions of Nakata films are on the way. Nakata will direct the American version of Ring 2, due out in November. It's a rare instance of a Japanese director making a Hollywood film--an event that may fill Nakata with the anguish and wonder his own movies engender. --By Richard Corliss