Paprika To Be Adapted Into A Live-Action Series By Cathy Yan
What if there was a device that allowed the user to enter other people's dreams? What if one of the devices was stolen by someone who could implant ideas in people's minds to control them? What kind of story could come out of this concept?
If your first thought is Christopher Nolan's "Inception," then congratulations, you played yourself. That film became the rare example of a movie that becomes a shorthand term for its premise — entering people's dreams. Still, it pales in comparison to the film it so blatantly rips off, Satoshi Kon's "Paprika," an anime movie adapted from Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel of the same name.
That novel was almost adapted to live-action over a decade ago by the late, great Wolfgang Petersen, but now Deadline reports that Tsutsui's "Paprika" is getting a second chance at becoming a live-action project, on the small screen. Cathy Yan has reportedly signed on to direct and executive produce a live-action series for Amazon Studios and Hivemind. Masi Oka, the man with a hand on every single anime live-action adaptation announced for the past decade, will also executive produce (he's reportedly involved in adaptations for "The Promised Neverland," "Mega Man," "Attack on Titan," and "Made in Abyss").
Don't follow these dreams
Originally released in four parts in the magazine Marie Claire in 1991, the techno thriller follows the frantic search for the criminal that stole the device that allows them to invade dreams. Though Tsutsui's novel was first adapted as a manga in 1994, it is perhaps best known for Satoshi Kon's anime film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2006.
Even as Kon's weakest anime project (his best are "Millennium Actress" and "Magnetic Rose," deal with it), it is a pure visual spectacle that pushes what animation and visual storytelling can do, while providing incredibly trippy visuals. Where the novel is much more focused on the techno-thriller aspect and the technical specificity of how this machine would work, Kon simplified the story to put visuals front and center.
As for Tsutsui's work, one of his first novels was "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time," about a high-school girl who accidentally creates a time loop when traveling through time. That novel has been adapted several times both for TV, the stage, manga, live-action, and perhaps most notably in animated form for the film of the same name by Mamoru Hosoda.