Murakami Haruki Short Story Collection ‘After the Quake’ Sets Film Adaptation, Sales at Bitters End (EXCLUSIVE)

‘After the Quake,’ a film adaptation of a Murakami Haruki story collection, has been picked up by Japan’s Bitters End for international rights sales.

Directed by Inoue Tsuyoshi (“Amachan”) and produced by “Drive My Car” producer Yamamoto Teruhisa, the film is based on four of the six short stories in Murakami’s 2000 book of the same title. The stories explore the complex aftermath of Japan’s earthquakes and other global crises.

The six short stories in the book were written in response to the Kobe earthquake and each one touches tangentially on the disaster. All were written in the third person and set in the narrow time period between the Feb. 1995 Kobe quake and the shocking poison gas attacks on the Tokyo metro system the following month.

The four short stories covered by the film are: “UFO in Kushiro”; “Landscape With Flatiron”; “All God’s Children Can Dance”; and “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo.” In English, the four were respectively published as short stories in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Harpers and GQ.

The film is currently in post-production. That positions it well for a premiere at a major European festival in the first half of 2025. And Bitters End is launching the sales effort on the eve of the Tokyo International Film Festival’s TIFFCOM rights market. Rights in Japan have not been disclosed.

Bitters End, which is a distributor with a 30-year pedigree, is currently expanding its production and international sales activities. Its sales slate includes: Zeze Takahisa’s “The Boy and the Dog,” a heartwarming tale of loyalty and resilience set for release in spring 2025, through Toho; and samurai epic “Bushido,” which is directed by Shiraishi Kazuya and stars Kusanagi Tsuyoshi. Distributed locally by Kino Films, “Bushido” won the Audience Award at the Far East Film Festival in Udine earlier this year.

Bitters End has handled art-house films by leading Japanese and international directors including Hamaguchi Ryusuke, Bong Joon-Ho, the Dardenne brothers, Jia Zhangke, Roy Anderson and Gianfranco Rosi. Its recent titles include “Perfect Days,” the Wim Wenders-directed title that was the opening picture of last year’s Tokyo festival, “La Chimera” and “Totem.”

The company was also the Japanese distributor of “Oppenheimer,” the Christopher Nolan-directed drama about the development of the first atomic bomb that was deemed too controversial for most others in Japan to handle.