‘Bushido’: Acclaimed ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Barry’ Director to Helm Samurai Movie for A24!!

Hiro Murai, the acclaimed director behind landmark episodes of Atlanta and Barry, is making the jump to the big screen. He is set to direct a new samurai movie for A24. Deadline reports that the film is titled Bushido.

Plot details for the film are being kept under wraps for the time being, but it is said to be a “high-stakes action film set aginst the backdrop of medieval Japan”. Bushido translates to “way of the warrior” in Japanese; it is the blanket term for the samurai code of honor and way of life. Samurai are in the zeitgeist right now after the explosive success of FX‘s long-in-the-works adaptation of James Clavell‘s Shogun; that series won universal critical acclaim and was renewed for multiple new seasons, despite adapting the entirety of Clavell‘s novel. The samurai film is also a staple of Japanese cinema; Akira Kurosawa, the director of Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Ran, is the most internationally recognized practitioner of the form.

Who Is Hiro Murai?

Murai got his start directing music videos for musicians like The Fray, Usher, and St. Vincent. In 2013 he directed the short film Clapping for the Wrong Reasons for Donald Glover, starting what would become a fruitful partnership. He served as an executive producer on Glover‘s series Atlanta, in addition to directing 26 episodes. He also directed the musical film Guava Island for Glover in 2019, and helmed the first two episodes of his Prime Video series Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Murai has also directed episodes of Legion, Snowfall, Barry, and Station Eleven. He is also an executive producer on The Bear. Murai‘s work has earned him six Emmy nominations and one win for his work on The Bear; he also won Grammy and MTV Video Music Awards for directing Glover‘s 2018 music video “This Is America”. In a 2022 examination of Murai’s career, Collider’s Matt Shore praised the cinematic nature of his TV work, noting that “his love of high-contrast visuals, gallows humor, and evocative camera movement elevate any script to a whole new level”, and spotlighting his directorial trademarks, including “aerial shots, smooth camera movement, and auditory crescendos that amp up a sequence’s tension”.

Bushido‘s script will be written by Henry Dunham (The Standoff at Sparrow Creek). Murai and Dunham will also produce alongside Ari Aster and Lars Knudsen for Square Peg, and Julia Oh, Christine D’Souza Gelb, and David Hinojosa for 2AM.