Iwaki Hitoshi's PARASYTE To Become Two Part Live Action Film In Japan

It was back in 2005 that New Line Cinema acquired the feature film rights to Iwaaki Hitoshi's popular scifi-horror manga Parasyte with an eye to having The Grudge helmer Shimizu Takashi direct and English language adaptation. The story revolves around a teenage boy whose hand is infected by an alien parasite, giving it strange, often uncontrollable, and always rather violent powers. Which would be a bad thing in most circumstances but given that the alien parasite's have taken over the minds of most people the alien-hand actually gives him a fighting chance to survive in a world gone mad.

With its story of bizarre mutations and teen on teen violence it's not too hard to draw comparisons between Parasyte and the long stalled big screen adaptation of Charles Burns' Black Hole - which has the added benefit of throwing teen sex into the mix - and, no surprise, the movie never happened.

Well, bad news for New Line but (potentially) good news for fans, then, in that New Line's option has now expired, prompting Japanese major Toho to swoop in and scoop the rights with Always director (and special effects whiz) Yamazaki Takashi attached to direct a two part live action adaptation with Himizu star Sometani Shota in the lead. Part One is slated for release in 2014 with Part Two to arrive a year later.