WarnerMedia Streamer Orders ‘Tokyo Vice’ Drama Series Starring Ansel Elgort From Endeavor Content
Baby Driver star Ansel Elgort is set to headline drama Tokyo Vice, which has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order from WarnerMedia’s upcoming streaming platform. It is based on the book by Jake Adelstein and comes from Tony-winning playwright J.T. Rogers (Oslo), producer John Lesher and Endeavor Content.
This marks the second official series order from the WarnerMedia streamer slated for a debut this fall. Tokyo Vice joins Love Life, a romantic comedy anthology series starring and executive produced by Anna Kendrick and Paul Feig also executive producing. The platform had been ramping up development and aggressively bidding on projects as well as mining the Warner Bros. library of IP. For instance, an animated Gremlins series, based on the popular Warner Bros. movies, is believed to have a series order with Amblin producing.
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Written by Rogers, based on Adelstein’s non-fiction first-hand account of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police beat, Tokyo Vice is Jake’s (Elgort) daily descent into the neon soaked underbelly of Tokyo, where nothing, and no one is truly what or who they seem. Elgort’s Jake Adelstein is an American journalist who embeds himself into the Tokyo Vice police squad to reveal corruption.
Rogers and director Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12) will helm the series along with Endeavor Content serving as the studio and John Lesher, Emily Gerson Saines and Ansel Elgort on board as executive producers.
Adelstein’s 2009 memoir Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat chronicled his years living in Tokyo as the first non-Japanese reporter working for one of Japan’s largest newspapers, Yomiuri Shinbun.
The book was originally earmarked for a feature adaptation in 2013 with Rogers writing the screeenplay based on a story by him and Adelstein and Lesher and Adam Kassan producing. Anthony Mandler was to direct the film, with Daniel Radcliffe attached to play Adelstein.
This marks the first TV role for Elgort whose feature starring roles also include The Fault In Our Stars. He is set to play Tony in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming feature adaptation of West Side Story.
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