Michael Mann Will Direct Ansel Elgort in HBO Max's TOKYO VICE Series

Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral, Last of the Mohicans) is set to direct the pilot episode of HBO Max’s series, Tokyo Vice. He might also end up directing multiple episodes of the show.

Tokyo Vice stars Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver) and Ken Watanabe (Inception, Godzilla). The series was written by J.T. Rogers and is based on Jake Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat. The drama will capture Adelstein’s “daily descent into the neon-soaked underbelly of Tokyo, where nothing and no one is truly what or who they seem.”

Here’s the description from the book:

A riveting true-life tale of newspaper noir and Japanese organized crime from an American investigative journalist.

Jake Adelstein is the only American journalist ever to have been admitted to the insular Tokyo Metropolitan Police Press Club, where for twelve years he covered the dark side of Japan: extortion, murder, human trafficking, fiscal corruption, and of course, the yakuza. But when his final scoop exposed a scandal that reverberated all the way from the neon soaked streets of Tokyo to the polished Halls of the FBI and resulted in a death threat for him and his family, Adelstein decided to step down. Then, he fought back. In Tokyo Vice he delivers an unprecedented look at Japanese culture and searing memoir about his rise from cub reporter to seasoned journalist with a price on his head.

This seems like the perfect project for Mann to step into and bring to life. He’s great at telling these kinds of stories and I’m looking forward to seeing how he handles this one. Production on the series begins in February on location in Japan.

Source: Deadline