The delightfully titled Tokyo Suckerpunch, which Tobey Maguire has been developing as producer and star for two years with screenwriter Ed Solomon (Men in Black) and producers Lucy Fisher and Doug Wick (Memoirs of a Geisha), has also recently picked up momentum. Now it looks like the movie — a romantic comedy/action/modern noir hybrid that uses live-action and anime — will reunite Maguire with Pleasantville costar Reese Witherspoon and writer-director Gary Ross, who also directed him in Seabiscuit.

“One of the most attractive things about it is that it combines anime with live action,” says Ross, who mixed black-and- white and color footage as a thematic device in Pleasantville, his 1998 directorial debut. “It presents a lot of stylistic opportunities in how you shoot the live action so that it works harmonically.”

Sony acquired the rights to Isaac Adamson’s poppy 2000 novel Tokyo Suckerpunch: A Billy Chaka Adventure in April 2005, but last month Ross became attached to develop another draft with Solomon that he will direct if it gets greenlighted. Adamson wrote several other Billy Chaka books — Hokkaido Popsicle, Dreaming Pachinko and Kinki Lullaby — which open up the possibility of another franchise for Maguire.

A draft dated May 22, 2007, is a jaunty, unpredictable foray into the peculiar, pulsing Tokyo cityscape. Billy Chaka — popular graphic novelist, Cleveland native and rabid Japanophile — travels to Japan for the first time to attend the premiere of a cheesy movie made from his self-mythologizing work (in Adamson’s novel, Chaka is a journalist for teen magazine Youth in Asia). There, he must contend with not only jarring culture shock but also mysterious fans, Dolph Lundgren (who stars as the movie Chaka) and a dangerous, mob-related kidnapping that starts to resemble one of his own crazy plots.

All, of course, while love-hate sparring with his cute and resourceful editor, Sarah, played by Witherspoon. Among the pleasures Solomon delivers are some laugh-out-loud but very black physical comedy, a tense but funny sojourn in a love motel and the prospect of hearing Witherspoon slip in and out of flawless Japanese.

“What Ed does so well is he captures that kind of 1930s male-female banter,” Ross says.

Though Ross says he, Maguire and Witherspoon are all game to make the film, potential production depends mostly on Oscar winner Witherspoon’s schedule — she’s committed to doing Four Christmases with Vince Vaughn this year — and, of course, Solomon’s rewrite.

Source: LA Times, thanks walktheline80!