Takashi Yamazaki
Takashi Yamazaki is one of Japan’s leading filmmakers specializing in movies with large-scale visual effects, embracing both live-action and anime movies. After working in animation jobs at the Japanese animation group Shirogumi through the late 1980s and the 1990s, Yamazaki broke out as a writer-director with two sci-fi movies, Juvenile (2000) and Returner (2002).
Yamazaki had his international breakthrough with the manga adaptation, Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005) and the sequels, Always: Sunset on Third Street 2 (2007) and Always: Sunset on Third Street 3 (2012).
After adapting for the big screen the Naoki Hyakuta novel, The Eternal Zero (2013), writer-director Takashi Yamazaki co-directed (with Ryuichi Yagi) the animated sci-fi hit, Stand By Me Doraemon (2014), the highest-grossing film in the long-running Doraemon franchise, with a global gross of $183.4 million, and which Yamazaki followed up six years later with the sequel, Stand By Me Doraemon (2020) as well as Stand By Me Doraemon (date to be announced).
Takashi Yamazaki continued to expand his storytelling range with the naval military drama, The Great War of Archimedes (2019), starring Masaki Suda and grossing nearly $18 million globally with Toho as Yamazaki’s regular distributor.
Takashi Yamazaki made one of his most acclaimed films to date, the CGI-animated Lupin III: The First (2019), which echoes many elements of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro (1979), premiered at the Annecy Animation Festival, and won best-animated film at the Japanese Academy Awards.
In a change of pace, Yamazaki made his next project Yokaipedia, a feature adaptation (with clear homages to Harry Potter and even Stranger Things) of the Hiroshi Saito/Etsuyoshi Miyamoto fantasy series, Obakezukan. Toho Studios picked writer-director Yamazaki to helm their 33rd Godzilla movie (in 70 years), the three-years-in-the-making Godzilla Minus One (2023), selected as the closing film of the Tokyo Film Festival.
followed the success of the 2023 Godzilla reboot as
director/writer/visual effects director of the sequel, Godzilla Minus Zero
(2026), the first Japanese movie filmed in IMAX, co-starring Ryunosuke Kamiki
and Minami Hamabe, produced by Toho Studios and Robot Communications, and
premiering at the New York Film Festival before a wide release by GKIDS
(U.S.)/Toho (Japan). Yamazaki was director/writer/producer/visual effects
director of his first English-language sci-fi movie described as a mix of Pacific
Rim and Cloverfield titled Grandgear (2028), produced by
Columbia Pictures and J.J. Abrams and his Bad Robot production unit, and which
was distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing.
Known For
The Fighter Pilot
(2013)
Always: Sunset on Third Street
(2005)
Parasyte: Part 1
(2014)
Takashi Yamazaki Movies
Director
Previous (3)
- 2026 |
Godzilla Minus Zero
Set in 1949, the Shikishima family confronts a fresh catastrophe two years after surviving their previous ordeal with the legendary monster.
- 2023 |
Godzilla Minus One
A kamikaze pilot plagued by survivor's guilt seeks redemption when a giant monster he failed to kill is transformed by radiation from atomic bomb tests and lays siege to post-war Japan.
- 2020 |
Lupin III: The First
Lupin III goes on a grand adventure to uncover the secrets of the Bresson Diary, which is tied to the legacy of his famous grandfather.
Writer
Previous (2)
- 2023 |
Godzilla Minus One
A kamikaze pilot plagued by survivor's guilt seeks redemption when a giant monster he failed to kill is transformed by radiation from atomic bomb tests and lays siege to post-war Japan.
- 2020 |
Lupin III: The First
Lupin III goes on a grand adventure to uncover the secrets of the Bresson Diary, which is tied to the legacy of his famous grandfather.
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