‘Nodame Cantabile’ goes from Manga to Big Screen
Tomoko Ninomiya’s Nodame Cantabile manga is moving to the big screen according to Variety. The story of a pianist and an apprentice conductor who have a torrid romance has already been a television series and the leads, Juri Ueno and Hiroshi Tamaki, will reprise their parts for two feature films according to Variety. Their television director Hideki Takeuchi will join them on the features.
Shooting on the first feature is scheduled to begin in May, taking the couple around Europe for five months. Toho and NTV anticipate releasing the first in December 2009 and the second feature the following spring.
The best-selling manga led to the television series in October 2006 and has been a growing success in Janapan.
NTV has produced a successful series of films based on Death Note and is shooting a trilogy, 20th Century Boys, based on Naoki Urasawa’s manga about “a convenience store clerk who discovers that the disastrous prophecies he wrote as a boy are coming true. The first part, released at the end of August, has earned $42 million.”