Three tales from a horror manga book will be made into live-action movies by the genre studio Fangoria.
The manga Smashed: Junji Ito Story Collection is created by the Japanese master of horror Junji Ito. A movie based on the vampire manga series Bloodsucking Darkness by the mangaka will start off the horrors. Jeff Howard, a screenwriter most known for his work on The Haunting of Hill House, will develop the script and serve as an executive producer for Fangoria.
Ito said, “Fangoria Studios is going to adapt my manga! I’m so excited to see how it will turn out.” The original story follows a painful breakup: Nami, a young woman, develops an eating disorder and starts throwing up blood. As a boy in her class begins obsessing about her health and takes horrifying measures to aid her, things take an unsettling turn. She starts having nightmares in which blood pours down on her and a terrible vampire face threatens her, and every time she wakes up, the bed is soaked in blood. It ends with a typical Ito twist that is positively nauseating and fits perfectly in with his best work.
Bloodsucking Darkness currently hasn’t revealed the release date or information about the director.
In recent years, a lot of Ito’s works have undergone adaptations. From 1998 through 2011, a film series was centered on the manga Tomie. Several adaptations of Uzumaki developed, with the first appearing in 2000. The animators’ desire to sacrifice its quality by providing a substandard final product caused a delay in the most latest adaptation, an animated series created by Adult Swim and Production IG USA. The anime has not yet been given a release date. In 2018, Studio Deen adapted several of Ito’s stories into the anime Junji Ito Collection. Junji Ito Maniac: Japanese Tales of the Macabre is a 2023 Netflix production that got mixed reviews for not capturing the mangaka’s artistic vision.