Ever since a casting call for extras went out earlier in the year, it’s been known that a live-action version of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Toki o Kakeru Shojo) was in the works. On October 1 I found out that Riisa Naka—the voice of Makoto in the 2006 animated film—and Akiyoshi Nakao were going to star, but in Japan nothing movie-related is ever official until they hold the press conference or send out the press releases. Well, now it’s official; the fourth theatrical adaptation of Tsutsui’s classic novel will be live-action, distributed by stylejam, and will be hitting Cinequanon’s Human Trust Cinema Shibuya and Yurakucho 1-chome sometime in March 2010 (nation-wide release yet to be determined).

According to Tokyograph, Naka will indeed be the star of the new film, but her character will be totally different. She’ll be playing Akari, the 18-year-old daughter of the protagonist of the original novel, Kazuko Yoshiyama (played by Narumi Yasuda). When Kazuko is injured in a car accident and falls into a coma, Akari leaps back in time to the 70s to seek out her mother’s first love, Kazuo Fukamachi. Instead, she meets a college student named Ryota (Nakao) who helps her with her search.

The film will be the feature length debut of director Masaaki Taniguchi, who has served as assistant director under Yojiro Takita, Kichitaro Negishi, Kazuyuki Izutsu, and Tetsuo Shinohara.

Photo/additional details via Eiga.com

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Tags: akiyoshi nakao, anna ishibashi, kanji ishimaru, masaaki taniguchi, masanobu katsumura, mayu kitaki, munetaka aoki, narumi yasuda, riisa naka, shota chiyo, the girl who leapt through time live action, tokio emoto, yuya matsushita