BY JEREMY KAY26 OCTOBER 2023
In the run-up to AFM Red Sea Media has come on board to handle international sales on the samurai action thriller Lone led by Japanese rising star Shogen from Brillante Ma Mendoza’s Busan selection Gensan Punch.
Josh Waller (Raze), a co-founder of Spectrevision with Elijah Wood and Daniel Noah, directed from his screenplay about a Japanese samurai and assassin who loses his family and finds himself stranded on an island where he gets kidnapped by a tribe of cannibals.
The warrior soon escapes and enacts revenge on his captors and their leader.
Well Go USA Entertainment is handling US rights and Lone is produced by Waller, Alan Pao and Doris Pfardrescher, with Ko Mori serving as executive producer in association with Vested Interest, Tunnel, and executive producer Tiffany Boyle
Red Sea head Roman Kopelevich negotiated the sales rights deal with Boyle on behalf of the filmmakers and said, “I love samurai films, so I fell in love with the hero arc of this man against the world story.”
For Spectrevision Waller has overseen production on more than a dozen films including Cooties, A Girl Walk Home Alone At Night, The Boy, Mandy, and Color Out Of Space.
Between 2012 and 2016 Waller directed three films outside of SpectreVision: Raze starring Zoë Bell; police thriller McCanick starring David Morse and Ciaran Hinds; and adventure thriller Camino starring Bell, and Tenoch Huerta. He is represented by Ramo Law and Fourward.
Besides starring in and co-producing 2021 Busan entry Gensan Punch, Shogen’s acting credits include Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist, series Death Note, Ramen Shop, and Chinese blockbuster Detective Chinatown 3.
Red Sea’s recent films include Damaged starring Samuel L. Jackson and Vincent Cassel; Confidential Informant with Mel Gibson and Kate Bosworth; The Minute You Wake Up Dead starring Morgan Freeman and Cole Hauser; and King Of Killers starring Frank Grillo and Stephen Dorff.