Dracula, Wolfman And Frankenstein Join A Boy With Very Large Ears In KAIBUTSU-KUN

Though director Yoshihiro Nakamura has won fans around the world with his scrappy indie efforts - Fish Story and Golden Slumber are particular favorites - the man also has a history of working as a hired gun on higher profile, bigger budget projects. And that's exactly the case with the upcoming live action feature film version of Kaibutsu-Kun.

Nakamura is bringing a big screen, big budget version of Kaibutsu-Kun to the big screen with what is sure to be the largest adventure to date for the big-eared kid and his monstrous companions.

Kaibutsu first appeared in 1965 as a manga by Fujiko Fujio, the story of a shape shifting boy and his friends Dracula, Wolfman and Franken who travel from Monster Land to the human world proving successful enough that it spawned anime versions in 1968 and 1980 and a live action television version running on Japan's NTV now. The television cast, anchored by Arashi's Satoshi Ohno, will be making the move to the big screen in a movie that looks to borrow from and mash together influences from a host of other sources.

A series of trailers for this one have arrived on the official site and you can see from the one below that Nakamura is playing this very much like a live action cartoon, wonky physics and all. And given Nakamura's pedigree I would expect something a little bit weirder and more subversive than you might expect from a family friendly effort such as this.