HBO Max’s crime drama series Tokyo Vice has added more actors to its already impressive cast. Directed by Michael Mann (Collateral) the series has already confirmed Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver) as the lead protagonist, and the other previously announced cast includes Ken Watanabe (Inception), Rachel Keller (Legion), Ella Rumpf (Raw), and Rinko Kikuchi (Babel). The newly announced cast includes Japanese actors Hideaki Ito (Brave Hearts: Umizaru), Shô Kasamatsu (Demekin), and Tomohisa Yamashita (The Head).
The series is written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers, and it stars Elgort as Jake Adelstein an American journalist, whose 2009 memoir titled Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan, inspired the story of the series. Tokyo Vice shows Adelstein as he goes into the underbelly of Tokyo life, revealing corruption and crime among the city’s criminal yakuza organizations with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.
In the series, Kikuchi will be playing a Japanese journalist, while Watanabe and Ito will be playing the role of Tokyo police detectives. Kasamatsu will be taking on the role of Chihara-Kai yakuza family member, and Yamashita will be playing Akira, a professional host who is hiding something. Tokyo Vice’s cast also includes Sugata Shun as the leader of Chihara-kai, Hagiwara Masato as the manager of the upscale hostess club, and Tanida Ayumi as the leader of the Tozawa-gumi crime group.
The pilot episode of the series will be directed by Mann, and Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) will also be directing. Tokyo Vice will be premiering exclusively on HBO Max in early 2022, and in Japan, WOWOW will taking the crime drama series to TV screens.
