Chinese studios to produce Kurosawa's shelved script

Chinese actor Chen Kun. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Nearly two decades after the death of iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, Chinese producers will make a film based on his shelved script, The Mask of the Black Death.

Beijing-based studio Huayi Brothers Media Corp and Taiwan filmmaker Chen Kuo-fu's CKF Pictures announced the joint project last week.

The Mask of the Black Death is expected to hit theaters during the weeklong National Day holiday in 2020. The holiday is the other most profitable period at the Chinese box office, with Spring Festival being the first.

Kurosawa, the first Asian to win the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival for Rashomon in 1951, influenced Hollywood greats such as Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.

Originally, The Mask of the Black Death was penned for Kurosawa's second production with a former Soviet studio, after his first such coproduction, Dersu Uzala, won the Oscar for best foreign language film in 1976. Dersu Uzala was his first non-Japanese film, based on the memoir of a Russian explorer.