While trying to find more information about the recent press announcement regarding unfinished Kurosawa footage, I stumbled upon a Japan Today article from December 29 last year.
The article in question is about the acquisition of “50% of copyright fees paid for film scripts by the late Akira Kurosawa”, including altogether 71 scripts both written and co-written by Kurosawa, and supposedly includes all of the scripts Kurosawa himself directed. The company that purchased the rights from Kurosawa Production is called DesignEXchange Co. Through the purchase, Hisao Kurosawa has been made a part of the company’s board of directors.
The company lists the following three aspects to be within the scope of their business:
Web commerce business: Management of design portal site “DEX”, download sales, product mail-order, etc.
Service business: Providing corporate service such as delivery of contents, ASP management, OEM license, design development, etc.
Product business: Development, manufacturing and distribution of packaged software, etc.
None of these quite spell out “film production company” to me, therefore making me somewhat worried about what exactly will be done with Kurosawa’s scripts. What seems sure, however, is that we will be seeing lots of more remakes in the coming years, both on and off the big screen.
Hisao Kurosawa’s abilities to lead Kurosawa Production Co. have been questioned before, and while I cannot obviously judge him without knowing all the facts, I must raise an eyebrow here once again, wondering where the company is heading.
I posted some related info here
More info