The official website of the sequel live-action film Kingdom II: To Distant Lands unveiled 4 new cast members joining the team on Tuesday, March 8, 2022. Japanese Academy Award winner Etsushi Toyokawa will feature in this movie as Lord Hyō, the first Shogun.

The film will release this summer.

The newly announced cast includes (left to right in the image below):

• Tsutomu Takahashi as Kyū Gen
• Yukiyoshi Ozawa as Go Kei
• Etsushi Toyokawa as Lord Hyō
• Kiyohiko Shibukawa as Baku Koshin

Shinsuke Satou is back in the director’s chair. He revealed that when he envisioned a person to cast the General’s role Toyokawa was the one who came to his mind.

Satou said, “The eyes are like a beast, the big body that wears a huge armor, and the presence and persuasive power as a general. When you think about it, only Etsushi Toyokawa comes to mind. So, I asked him to appear(in my film). “

The previously announced cast includes:

• Amane Okayama as Bi Hei
• Takahiro Miura as Bitо̄
• Takayuki Hamatsu as Taku Kei
• Nana Seino as Kyо̄ Kai

Kento Yamazaki, Ryō Yoshizawa, and Kanna Hashimoto are all reprising their respective characters Shin (Xin), Ei Sei (Yin Zheng), and Ka Ryō Ten (He Liao Diao) from the previous film.

Tsutomu Kuroiwa will collaborate with Satou and original author Yasuhisa Hara on the scriptwriting, and Yutaka Yamada is composing the soundtrack.

The first film, Kingdom was released in Japan in April 2019 and grossed 690,219,500 yen (about US$6.17 million) in its first three days, selling 506,861 tickets. The picture later sold a total of 4.11 million tickets for 5,471,938,400 yen (about US$50.42 million), earning a total of 5.73 billion yen (approximately US$53.2 million).

Kingdom is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yasuhisa Hara. It has been serialized in Shueisha’s seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump since January 2006, with its chapters collected in sixty-four tankōbon volumes as of February 2022.

The series was adapted into a three-season anime television series by Studio Pierrot. A fourth season will premiere in April 2022.

As of February 2022, the Kingdom manga had over 87 million copies, making it one of the best-selling manga series of all time. In 2013, the manga won the Grand Prize of the Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

Kingdom provides a fictionalized account of the Warring States period primarily through the experiences of the war orphan Xin and his comrades as he fights to become the greatest general under the heavens, and in doing so, unifying China for the first time in 500 years.

Source: Mantan Web