French comedy/live action film adaptation of "City Hunter", "Nicky Larson: Et Le Parfum De Cupidon" is performing well in the box office

On February 6th, the French live action adaptation of the anime series “City Hunter” was released in theaters and in five days, 630,000 tickets were sold and is currently at #3 in the box office. Considering the film is against popular films such as “Qu’est-ce qu’on a encore fait au bon Dieu?” (What have we done to God yet?) and “Dragons 3” (How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World), so far the film has been entertaining “Nicky Larson” fans, especially with the many anime references included in the film.

The series written and illustrated by Hojo Tsukasa on “Weekly Shonen Jump” from 1985 to 1991 had an anime series adaptation from 1987-1991.

In 1993, a Hong Kong film live action adaptation with Jacky Chan was created and in 2011, a Korean TV series adaptation.

In France, the anime series known as “Nicky Larson” was broadcast from November 1990 and was released in 2007-2008 in its uncensored Japanese version with subtitles on the Nolife channel.

And the live action film which was released in France is directed and written by Phillippe Lacheau (star of the “Baby Sitting” films) and stars Lacheau and Elodie Fontan (who stars in the hit film of 2019, “Qu’est-ce qu’on a encore fait au bon Dieu?” in France). The film also has cameo appearances by American actress Pamela Anderson and Dorothee.

Lachaeu has said that he wanted the film to stay as faithful as possible to the manga and not disappoint fans of “Nicky Larson”, as he saw what happened with “Dragonball Evolution” (2009), the Hollywood live-action adaptation of “Dragon Ball” by Toriyama Akira.

Creator Tsukasa Hojo enjoyed the screenplay for Lacheau’s film and said about the screenplay, “I received many offers to adapt ‘City Hunter’ for the cinema and in most cases, the script was flat and a lot of action movie scripts do not understand the point. For Phillippe Lacheau’s script, there was everything: Drama, laughter and a bit of naughtiness. He had taken into account the totality of the work”.

The film will be released in Japan in 2019 and a live action version from China will also be released in 2019.