Hong Kong star-director Stephen Chow once told K2 Pictures founder Kii Muneyuki that Japanese filmmakers should stop imitating kung fu and build action films on their own martial arts instead, Kii said Saturday at Taiwan Creative Content Fest (TCCF) in Taipei. That is Japanese culture. Only you can turn it into action films, so you should be the ones doing it.
Stop aping kung fu,’” recalled Kii, who said he has shared drinks with Chow in Tokyo a few times. He added that he agreed with Chow, pointing to Netflix sumo drama “Sanctuary” as the kind of project that draws on culture unique to Japan. Kii’s K2P Film Fund I, which backed Kore-eda Hirokazu’s “Look Back,” could also open its doors to new investors.
The fund closed its $33 million equity round in February. Kii said more companies approached K2 about investing after the close, and that the round could reopen if existing backers agree. He has not yet decided whether to do so.
Some 30 companies have invested so far, led by MUFG Bank, Japan’s biggest lender. Other backers include Bandai, Dentsu, the government-backed Development Bank of Japan and property companies Tokyu Land and Mori Trust. Kii serves as the fund’s general partner.
TThe equity is being paired with loans that are being added one after another and will ultimately total $67 million, Kii said, for a planned total of $100 million and a target of 50 films over seven years. Kii shared the stage with director Nagata Koto, whose Fukushima-set noir “The Nuke Crab” K2 unveiled at Cannes in May. Kii said he and Nagata are aiming for a hit in Japan and in Eastern Europe, including Poland and Ukraine, where he believes audiences who lived through the Chernobyl accident might connect with it.
The project is in development, with a shoot targeted for next year. The film follows those who profited from the huge sums that flowed from across Japan into the radiation clean-up of the Tohoku region. Nagata, whose “Baka’s Identity” competed at Busan last year, described the subject as socially taboo in Japan and the kind of material that productions involving TV networks or major studios would never take on.
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