Justin Lin likely to direct Sony’s adaptation of One Punch Man
New Delhi: Director of several Fast and the Furious films, Justin Lin, is likely to direct an adaptation of popular Japanese project titled One Man Punch, for Sony Pictures.
Lin recently left the Fast and Furious franchise as director while the latest film is still in production.
One Punch Man is a globally popular manga series that narrates the story of Saitama, a superhero who could defeat any opponent with a single punch but gets bored with the lack of hurdles in his fight against evil.
The web comic has been adopted as an anime and a video game. After its premiere in 2009, One Punch Man was remade as manga in the Japanese magazine Shueisha’s Tonari no Young Jump Next, with drawings by Yusuke Murata.
Meanwhile, Viz Media translated the manga into English language in 2015. The manga became tremendously successful globally with 30 million copies sold worldwide.
It received Eisner Award and Harvey Award nominations for its unusual sense of humour and parody of typical superhero clichés in 2015 and 2016 respectively.
The adaptations were soon integrated into consoles and mobile devices. According to the studio, it has ample potential to become a successful franchise.
Sony Pictures acquired the film rights from Shueisha, with producers Avi Arad and Ari Arad of Arad Productions, script by Scott Rosenberg and Jeff Pinkner, and production and script inputs by Lin.
(Avya Mathur)
