Posted by The gothis production of Edgar Allan Poe has always inspired dozens of movies and television adaptations. A trend that’s certainly encouraged by the claustrophobic atmosphere and the horrifying aspects that characterize many of his works, elements that are always effective when “translated” in a visual formate. Akira Kurosawa, the famous awarded Japanese filmmaker, could not resist Poe’s dark fascination and commited himself for over twenty years, in writing a screenplay inspired by one of the writer’s most famous tales: The Mask of the Red Death (published in 1842). Death becomes then Black in Kurosawa’s adaptation.
This screenplay, completed shortly before the filmmaker’s death in 1998 and never brought to the screen, is going to be produced by Huayi Brothers and CKF Pictures and transformed in a real movie, that will be shot between Russia and China. Akira Kurosawa started to work on it after his 1975’s Dersu Uzala and in 1998 he was actually supposed to start filming it, before he suffered the stroke that will weaken him until his death.
The release of the film is scheduled for 2020, however the co-founder of the Huayi Brothers, James Wang, revealed that he had not yet found the right director to entrust this important production. An hesitation which is completely understandable, considering that that director would have the challenge of working on a script by a sacred monster like Kurosawa.
So far, everything we have is the movie poster, which you can see above in this article. For any other development, we need to wait.
