Oh boy. News recently broke that Warner Bros has picked up the rights to the bestselling novel Satori by Don Winslow, with Leonardo DiCaprio set to star: Warner Bros. Acquires Don Winslow's Post-WWII Novel SATORI with Leonardo DiCaprio Set to Star.The action thriller, set in post-war Japan, centers on -- surprise! -- a westerner named Nicholai Hel raised by a Japanese general and taught the deadly skills of an assassin, who gets caught up in some messy international intrigue.
The studio apparently sees some Bourne-like franchise potential in this material. Here's the publisher's back-of-the-book synopsis:
It is the fall of 1951, and the Korean War is raging. Twenty-six-year-old Nicholai Hel has spent the last three years in solitary confinement at the hands of the Americans. Hel is a master of hoda korosu, or "naked kill," is fluent in seven languages, and has honed extraordinary "proximity sense"-an extra-awareness of the presence of danger. He has the skills to be the world's most fearsome assassin and now the CIA needs him.The post-war Japan setting immediately reminds me of that white-guy-as-Yakuza movie I mentioned a couple of months ago. And what I said back then still applies: Hollywood can make a movie set anywhere in the world, in any era of history... and still somehow find a way for the movie to star a white guy.
The Americans offer Hel freedom, money, and a neutral passport in exchange for one small service: to go to Beijing and kill the Soviet Union's commissioner to China. It's almost certainly a suicide mission, but Hel accepts. Now he must survive chaos, violence, suspicion, and betrayal while trying to achieve his ultimate goal of satori-the possibility of true understanding and harmony with the world.
More here: Warner Bros Acquires Post-WWII Don Winslow Novel 'Satori' For Leonardo DiCaprio