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Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders Mystery Novel Gets Live-Action Adaptation

Hulu Japan announced on Thursday that it is producing a live-action adaptation of Yukito Ayatsuji's The Decagon House Murders (Jukkakukan no Satsujin) mystery novel which will debut on Hulu Japan on March 22. Hulu Japan did not reveal the format of the adaptation (film or series).

Akira Uchikata is directing the adaptation. Hiroyuki Yatsu (Sōten no Ken: Re:Genesis manga, As the Gods Will live-action film), Madoka Hayano, and Kaori Fujii are penning the script.

The original 1987 mystery novel by Ayatsuji is often credited by mystery fans in Japan as launching the shinhonkaku (New Orthodox) mystery sub-genre. The sub-genre includes many elements of classical mystery fictions, such as elaborate locked rooms and game-like puzzles that audiences are also expected to piece together, but also including elements of postmodernism and metatextual references, veering away from realism and embracing fantastical playfulness, nihilism, and absurdity.

Locked Room International published an English translation of the novel (translated by Ho-Ling Wong) in 2015. Pushkin Press published a new version of the book (with the same translation) in May 2021. Pushkin Press describes the novel:

Taking its cues from Agatha Christie's locked-room classic And Then There Were None, the setup is this: The members of a university detective-fiction club, each nicknamed for a favorite crime writer (Poe, Carr, Orczy, Van Queen, Leroux and — yes — Christie), spend a week on remote Tsunojima Island, attracted to the place, and its eerie 10-sided house, because of a spate of murders that transpired the year before. That collective curiosity will, of course, be their undoing.

As the students approach Tsunojima in a hired fishing boat, 'the sunlight shining down turned the rippling waves to silver. The island lay ahead of them, wrapped in a misty veil of dust,' its sheer, dark cliffs rising straight out of the sea, accessible by one small inlet. There is no electricity on the island, and no telephones, either.

A fresh round of violent deaths begins, and Ayatsuji's skillful, furious pacing propels the narrative. As the students are picked off one by one, he weaves in the story of the mainland investigation of the earlier murders. This is a homage to Golden Age detective fiction, but it's also unabashed entertainment."

Hiro Kiyohara launched a manga adaptation of the novel in Kodansha's Afternoon magazine in August 2019, and ended it in April 2022. The manga's fifth and final volume shipped in May 2022.

Ayatsuji published the Another horror mystery novel in Japan in 2009. The novel inspired a 2012 anime by P.A. Works, with character designs by Noizi Ito. Ayatsuji published a sequel novel titled Another: Episode S in 2013, and a second sequel titled Another 2001 in 2014. Kiyohara launched a manga adaptation of Another in Kadokawa's Young Ace magazine in 2010, and ended it in 2012. Kadokawa published four volumes for the manga. Kiyohara also drew the two-chapter Another0 manga in Young Ace in 2012. Yen Press published both the original novel and the manga adaptation in English.

Source: Eiga Natalie