After several false starts, Uzumaki is finally scheduled for release by Adult Swim on September 28 and will stream the following day on Max. The long-delayed film adaptation of Junji Ito’s horror manga had first been announced five years ago, in 2019.
The four-part series is based on Ito’s three-volume manga series that was first published in 1998 in Shogakukan’s seinen manga magazine Big Comic Spirits.
Uzumaki follows the story of Kirie Goshima and Shuichi Saito, two high-school students in a small fictional Japanese town that has been afflicted by a so-called “spiral curse” that threatens its very survival. The two young students are tasked with finding a way to rescue themselves and their fellow townspeople from the mysterious malady, which manifests in the form of a treacherous spiral shape.
The official synopsis sets a tone of mayhem with this passage: “’Let’s leave this town together,’ asks Shuichi Saito, a former classmate of Kirie Goshima, a high school girl who was born and grew up in Kurouzu-cho. Everything from a strange whirlwind, billowing smoke from the crematorium, and the residents is turning into spirals. People’s eyes spin in whirls, a tongue spirals, and the bodies twist unnaturally. In an attempt to escape the curse of the spirals, Kirie decides to flee from Kuouzu-cho, but can she get away from this turmoil?”
The Uzumaki series is being directed by Hiroshi Nagahama, whose credits include Mushi-Shi and Flowers of Evil. The musical score is being composed by Colin Stetson, who did the honors for Hereditary. The upcoming project is being produced by Drive, the Japanese animation studio known for the second season of Up Your Etermity.
This is not the first time that Uzumaki has been made into a live-action production. In 2000, a four-part live-action version was released in Japan, directed by the Ukrainian-born Higuchinsky, also known as Akihiro Higuchi.