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Drops of God Manga Gets U.S.-French-Japanese Live-Action TV Series
posted on by Crystalyn Hodgkins
The entertainment news service Variety reported on Monday that Tadashi Agi and Shū Okimoto's The Drops of God (Kami no Shizuku) manga is inspiring a live-action television series that will be multilingual as a collaboration between U.S., French, and Japanese companies. Legendary Television, Dynamic Television, France Télévisions, and Hulu Japan are backing the project, and are producing the project with Adline Entertainment.
Oded Ruskin (Absentia, No Man's Land) is directing the series, and Quoc Dang Tran (Marianne, Parallel) adapted the screenplay. Dynamic's Klaus Zimmermann (Borgia, Trapped) is producing the series.
Variety describes the story of the TV series, which features a female protagonist instead of a male protagonist in the manga:
The story involves a woman who discovers that her estranged father has left her the world's greatest wine collection in his will. But, to claim her inheritance she must compete against a Japanese man who her father regarded as a son and may have been more.
Variety reports that filming has already begun on the project in France, Italy, and Japan. The eight-episode, one-hour series will star French actress Fleur Geffrier (Elle) as the protagonist and Tomohisa Yamashita (live-action Ikebukuro West Gate Park, Kurosagi, Terraformars) as her Japanese rival.
Legendary Television is handling worldwide distribution outside of France and Japan. Hulu Japan will exclusively stream the series inside Japan alongside its world premiere.
Siblings Shin and Yuko Kibayashi — under the pen name Tadashi Agi — launched The Drops of God manga with artist Okimoto in Kodansha's Morning magazine 2004. A live-action series based on the manga aired in Japan in 2009. The manga ended in June 2014, and the 44th and final compiled book volume shipped in July 2014. The manga's final arc, titled Marriage: Kami no Shizuku Saishūshō (Marriage ~The Drops of God Final Arc~), launched in May 2015, and it ended in October 2020.
Comixology and Kodansha Comics have released the manga in English digitally.
Throughout its serialization, the manga had famously boosted the sales of wines profiled in the story. The French wine magazine La Revue du vin de France has recognized the manga, giving it the magazine's top award in 2010. The New York Times also profiled the manga in its Dining and Wine section in 2008.
Source: Variety (Patrick Frater)
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