Apple's 'Monarch', 'Tokyo Vice' director feature among Japan location recipients

Apple TV+ series’ Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters and Neuromancer, and a feature from Tokyo Vice director Josef Kubota Wladyka are among the latest projects to be granted funding from Japan’s location production incentive programme.

The second season of action-adventure series Monarch: Legacy Of Monsters will qualify for the incentive as it is set to film on location in Japan for several days in November. The series, based around Japanese icon Godzilla, is largely shooting in Australia, having relocated from Canada’s British Colombia where season one was primarily filmed.

Japan’s Toho Co. licensed the rights to Legendary Entertainment as part of an ongoing relationship that has seen the production of features including Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, Godzilla Vs. Kong and Kong: Skull Island. Shogun star Anna Sawai and Kurt Russell will return for the second season of the TV series, which is expected to release in late 2025.

Japan’s burgeoning incentive scheme, which was officially launched in 2023 to attract international productions to shoot in the country, is also set to support Neuromancer, a series adaptation of the 1984 William Gibson novel that helped birth the cyberpunk genre.

It is unknown how much of the 10-episode drama will film in Japan but the series was  announced in February and will star Callum Turner (named a Screen Star of Tomorrow in 2014) as a super-hacker who is thrust into a web of digital espionage. It is produced by Skydance Television and Anonymous Content with Wowow, Japan’s leading premium pay-TV broadcaster. A release is anticipated in 2026.

The latest round of funding will also include Ha-Chan Shake Your Booty, an upcoming feature from US filmmaker Josef Kubota Wladyka whose directorial credits include Tribeca award-winners Catch The Fair One and Dirty Hands as well as Max crime drama series Tokyo Vice, which filmed in Japan.

Few details are available for the upcoming feature but it follows a young woman who overcomes life’s challenges through her passion for dance. The US production has partnered with Japan’s Thefool Inc., whose credits include Sho Miyaki’s Berlinale selection All The Long Nights, and is set to film in Tokyo from November to December.

They are the latest titles to benefit from Japan’s location production incentive, which offers a cash rebate of 50% to selected productions whose direct production costs in Japan exceed $3.3m (¥500m) or whose total production costs exceed $6.7m (¥1bn) and whose direct production costs in Japan exceed $1.3m (¥200m). The upper limit for subsidies is $6.7m (¥1bn).

Recent recipients of funding include Rental Family starring Brendan Fraser; sports biopic The Smashing Machine, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt; Cine France-Toho Tombo co-production Yoroi; and South Korean drama series What Comes After Love.

Japan’s new prime minister Shigeru Ishiba pledged his support to the content industry during the opening ceremony of this year’s ongoing Tokyo International Film Festival. However, the country’s recent general election results mean his Liberal Democratic Party now need to form a coalition government for him to remain in position.

This will have an impact on the incentive, which is funded by a supplemental budget measure titled JLOX+ and is not a permanent fixture in the government’s annual budget.

However, Japan Film Commission secretary general and film commissioner Ruriko Sekine told Screen at the Asian Contents & Film Market (ACFM) in South Korea earlier this month that with the momentum created by the programme and its positive economic knock-on effects, “the government can’t stop now”.

Michael Rosser also contributed to this story, which also appears on our sister site Screen