[floatl][/floatl]Aintitcoolnews notes a report on a French film site which says that the future of director Christopher Gans' film version of the Capcom video title "Onimusha" is now up in the air:
"Onimusha is postponed for a long time...The shooting was about to begin in June in China. The pre-production was over : 3D previz, storyboards, casting, sfx preparation, locations, stage designs...The casting was about to be revealed: Takeshi Kaneshiro, of course, but also Tsuyoshi Ihara ("Letters from Iwo Jima"), Satomi Ishihara and Emilie de Ravin ("Claire in Lost")...So, what happened? Believe it or not, the first reason is linked to the tragic death of Heath Ledger on January 22th. Ledger was working on the new Terry Gilliam movie, which is produced by independent French producer Samuel Hadida...The shooting of "Dr Parnassus" was stopped which forced Hadida to push back Onimusha...Very soon the schedule of Takeshi Kaneshiro didn't match with the new shooting dates...It was maybe possible to find other shooting dates for all the Asian actors and Emily de Ravin, but there was still a problem for the casting of the part of Jacob, a foreigner who had been written in to the script: the threat of an actors strike in June which has tightened actors schedules in Hollywood"...more...
The piece goes on to say that Gans has moved on to another project which will shoot at the end of 2008. If he remains attached to Onimusha, then work could not begin on the film for another 18 months.