When marketing films in different countries studios often focus the marketing materials on any characters or actors that they think will have a pull in that particular country.
Back when Cannonball Run was released, for instance, the posters in Hong Kong featured Jackie Chan much more prominently than the film’s actual star, Burt Reynolds. A good recent example is the marketing in Japan for Inception which features Ken Watanabe much more prominently than he appears in the US marketing.
So for the new Japanese TV spot for Predators it is not surprising that the main character featured is the Yakuza Hanzo, played by Louis Ozawa Changchien.
I’ve got to admit that I loved it when I saw that there would be a sword wielding Yakuza in Predators so this TV spot is pretty well pitched at me too. Hopefully you’ll get a kick out of it too. Check it out embedded below.
Predators is released on July the 9th.
