“Change of heart?” Masami Nagasawa continues to challenge new frontiers and “dark clouds” loom over the sequel to the popular series.

Tackling the new frontier of “horror mysteries

It was announced late last year that actor Masami Nagasawa (37) will star in the movie “Dollhouse” (directed, written, and originally conceived by Shinobu Yaguchi), scheduled for release in the summer of 2013.

The film, a “doll mystery” written and directed by Yaguchi, will focus on the mystery of a doll that looks cute at first glance but has a disturbing air of “something strange” about it. The details of Nagasawa’s role were kept under wraps, and only a visual of Nagasawa with long black hair sitting on a chair, holding a doll with the same look in her hands, was revealed.

Nagasawa, who said he was eager to appear in the film after reading the script, appealed, “It’s a really scary movie where the strange sense of where these people are going never ends and continues to the end. Director Yaguchi, who has not worked with Nagasawa for 11 years since their first collaboration in the film “WOOD JOB! Please be careful not to be possessed by her.

Director Yaguchi is known for “Waterboys” (’01) and “Swing Girls” (’04). He has also worked on the omnibus horror drama “Gakko no Kaidan” (1999, ’00, ’01) for Fuji Television, but this is his first attempt at a horror-mystery type film.

The lead actor, Mr. Nagasawa, is also making his first attempt at this type of work, and it is believed that he accepted the offer with the aim of breaking new ground. As director Yaguchi has said in his PR, it will be very interesting to see what kind of “Munch face” he will show us.

Nagasawa played the leading role in Koki Mitani’s film “Let’s Talk about Suomi,” which was released in September last year. However, the film unexpectedly failed to gross 1.7 billion yen at the box office and was met with mixed reviews.

On the other hand, his first attempt at a play by playwright Hideki Noda (69), the stage play “Sho Sankaku Kankei (The Right Triangle),” which he co-starred in with Storm actor Jun Matsumoto (41), became a hot topic, starting with a Tokyo performance last July and continuing with a London performance in the UK.

In addition, the stage play “Odoru Fuu” written and directed by Horai Ryuta (49), who is in the news for his marriage announcement with Sairi Ito (30), will be performed in April, with Moriyama Mirai (40) in the double lead role. This will be the first collaboration with Moriyama in 14 years, since the movie “Moteki” (’11).

As an actor, Nagasawa is always challenging herself to try new things, but a sequel to that series, which has become her signature work, remains eagerly awaited.

At one point it was said that it was impossible to produce a sequel…

The “Confidence Man JP” series was aired as a Fuji TV drama series in the April ’18 season, and the three film versions of the series have become a hit with a cumulative total of approximately 10 billion yen in box-office revenue. Ms. Nagasawa played the role of Daruko, the leader of a group of naive con artists, and won numerous film awards, including the Best Actress Award at the 63rd Blue Ribbon Awards. The film is expected to be the first sequel to be produced since the third theatrical version in 2010.

For a while, there were dark clouds over the production of a sequel to the film. One of the main cast members, Masahiro Higashide (36), was involved in an affair. In January 2008, the Shukan Bunshun (literary magazine) reported his affair with actress Erika Karada (27), and the second theatrical version, which was scheduled to be released in May of the same year, was put in jeopardy. However, although it was postponed due to Corona, it was released in July.’ In January 2010, the third feature film, which had been shot before the affair was revealed, was released.

Higashide is currently working mainly on films, and last August he announced his remarriage to former actress Hanabayashi (29) and his wife’s pregnancy, and on December 28 the couple made their first media appearance together on an Internet TV station, ABEMA. While terrestrial TV dramas are still tough to get into, there should be no problem in using them in a series of movies, even if they are produced and distributed by Toho, a major film production company.

If anything, Nagasawa seems to have had a “change of heart” and is focusing on new genres of work, and does not seem to have much interest in a sequel to the series. The deaths of Haruma Miura and Yuko Takeuchi, who co-starred in the movie version, are also said to have affected his motivation for a sequel.

It is unfortunate for the fans who are looking forward to the resumption of the series, but the production of a sequel seems to be a difficult task.

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