Tokyo 's Lotus and Los Angeles-based Harbor Light Entertainment have announced two projects based on Akira Kurosawa properties, slated for release in 2010.

One project will be a modern-day Hollywood remake of Akira Kurosawa's famed 1950 film Rashomon. Under the working title of Rashomon 2010 , the action will be relocated to a modern-day small US town, centring on the murder of an affluent businessman and the rape of his wife. The director and cast have yet to be announced.

Rashomon 2010 will be co-produced by a consortium including Lotus, Harbor Light, L.A.'s Lexicon Filmed Entertainment and Singapore's Upside Down Entertainment.

Also in development is an animated feature adaptation of Kurosawa's unproduced screenplay, The Masque Of Black Death. Co-written with Masato Ide, the project began life in 1977 and was intended to go into production in 1998 as the first project written by Kurosawa for another director.

Based on Edgar Allan Poe's similarly titled The Masque Of The Red Death, the story takes place in Russia in the early 1900s where a plague has wiped out most of the population. Creative credits have yet to be announced, but animation will be done in Japan.

The same production consortium as Rashomon 2010 will co-produce. Both films will be produced in cooperation with Kurosawa Productions, which has licensed the rights.

The two films are set for release in 2010 to time with other events under the AK100 Project banner, which will celebrate the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa's birth.

Also expected to screen are a posthumously completed documentary on Noh theatre and unseen footage from Kurosawa's brief work on 1970 US-Japan co-production Tora! Tora! Tora! before he left the production.

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