Takashi Yamazaki, the acclaimed director of Godzilla Minus One, will next be directing, writing, and producing Grandgear, his first English-language feature for Sony Pictures. Sony, which won a competitive bidding war for the project, has not released details or a release date about the upcoming film.

J. J. Abrams, who directed Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will also jointly produce the film for Bad Robot with Glen Zipper. He also has been a writer for Marvel Comics, co-authoring a Spider-Man project with his son Henry.

Yamazaki became internationally known for his work on Godzilla Minus One, the 2023 film that portrayed Japan’s postwar resistance to the monster’s devastating attacks while focusing on the psychological trauma and grief it engendered. Earlier, Yamazaki had directed a spate of films, including Dragon Story, The Eternal Zero, The Great War of Archimedes, Lupin III: The First, Space Battleship Yamato, and the two Stand by Me Doraemon movies. He has attributed his interest in films to 1970s science-fiction epics like Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Godzilla Minus One, which earned a gross of more than $115 globally, was the first Godzilla movie—and the first non-English language film—to win an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, in addition to being a critical success. The epic achieved a Tomatometer score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, just two points shy of a perfect score. The film starred Ryunosuke Kamiki in the leading role of kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima, with Minami Hamabe playing the role of his girlfriend Noriko Oishi.

In addition to his Oscar for Godzilla: Minus One, Yamazaki has also won many awards in his native Japan, including eight Japanese Academy Awards, five Nikkan Sports Film Awards, two Hochi Film Awards, and an Asian Film Award. Taken together, his films have grossed more than $523 million worldwide.

Check out other stories by Edward Moran.