Yakuza TV show causes concern as cast claims they were told not to play the games
The cast of Amazon’s upcoming TV series “Like a Dragon: Yakuza” have been told not to play the games, and fans are now worried about the series.
Video game adaptations have always been quite controversial. While earlier works were largely unsuccessful with critics and at the box office, more recent TV series such as The Last of Us, The Witcher and Fallout have managed to escape the curse.
However, following the widely panned release of the Borderlands movie, concerns about video game adaptations have once again arisen. The upcoming Like a Dragon: Yakuza series is another that is already raising concerns. The series is set to release on October 25, 2024 and is being developed by Amazon.
In a recent interview with GamesRadar+, the cast of the new TV series Like a Dragon: Yakuza revealed that Amazon specifically told them not to play the games so that the characters in the series could be explored “from the ground up.”
“I know these games – everyone in the world knows these games. But I haven’t played them. I would like to try them, but they had to stop me because they wanted to explore everything from scratch – for the character in the script. That’s why I decided not to play,” confessed Kenot Katu, the actor who will play Akira Nishikiyama in the TV series.
However, Katu added that he and the rest of the cast have been engaging with the franchise’s legacy despite the lack of games.
“I definitely knew the work very well, but I didn’t realize the franchise was so big worldwide. We decided we would do our own version, revive the characters, take their spiritual elements and embody them in our own way. We wanted to draw a clear line, but all that lay beneath was respect.”
Following this admission from the cast, some fans of the Like a Dragon series are now extremely concerned about the quality of the series.
One X user explained: “Yeah, this worked really well on… Halo, Cowboy Bebop, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist, Dragon Ball Evolution, Ghost in the Shell, and many others.”
Another called the decision a “recipe for failure.” Meanwhile, others asked, “If people have no intention of using the source material, why not just create a brand new intellectual property instead of trying to latch onto someone else?”
