Tokyo Vice, HBO Max’s new Japanese crime series, has found several international homes, with Endeavor Content closing sales on the hourlong crime drama with multiple broadcasters.
Endeavor unveiled Thursday that it has sold the show to Canal+ in France, Canada’s Crave channel and to Paramount+ in Australia, with Starzplay taking rights for the U.K. and Ireland and across German-speaking Europe. OSN+ licensed the show for the Middle East and Northern Africa.
HBO Max licensed Tokyo Vice for the U.S., with pay-TV channel Wowow as the Japanese commissioning home. The series will go out on HBO Max across the streamer’s Latin America and European footprint, and on HBO Go in Southeast Asia, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
Loosely inspired by the 2009 nonfiction book by American journalist Jake Adelstein, Tokyo Vice stars Ansel Elgort (Baby Driver) as an American journalist who relocates to Tokyo in the 1990s, becoming the first foreign-born reporter on staff at a major Japanese newspaper. A veteran detective in the vice squad, played by Oscar nominee Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai), takes him under his wing as he starts to explore a dangerous life in the Japanese underworld.
Tokyo Vice was created and written by Tony award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers, who acts as showrunner and executive producer. Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat) directed the pilot and also serves as executive producer. Rinko Kikuchi, Rachel Keller, Ella Rumpf, Hideaki Ito, Show Kasamatsu and Tomohisa Yamashita co-star.
Tokyo Vice premieres Thursday, April 7, on HBO Max in the U.S. and Wowow in Japan.
