“Godzilla” star Ken Watanabe will co-star alongside Ansel Elgort on HBO Max’s “Tokyo Vice” adaptation. Watanabe will also serve as an executive producer.
The series is based on Jake Adelstein’s non-fiction book of the same name, the series centers on the Tokyo Metropolitan Police. Watanabe will play Hiroto Katagiri, a detective in the organized crime division of the Tokyo Police Department who is also a father-figure to Jake (Elgort) throughout the series as he helps guide him along the thin and often precarious line between the cops and the world of organized crime.
Elgort stars as Jake Adelstein, an American journalist who embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption. According to HBO Max, the series “will chronicle Jake’s daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo, where nothing, and no one, is truly what or who they seem.”
J.T. Rogers will write the adaptation with Destin Daniel Cretton, John Lesher, Emily Gerson Saines, and Elgort serving as executive producers. Endeavor Content will serve as the studio.
Watanabe most recently reprised his “Godzilla” role as Dr. Ishiro Serizawa on the 2019 sequel to the film, “Godzilla: King of the Monsters.”
HBO Max, the upcoming streaming service from WarnerMedia, is set to debut next spring.