Posted in: Adult Swim, TV | Tagged: Get Jiro

Get Jiro! Tanaka on Bourdain Series Adapt; Welliver, Pill, Kirk Cast

Alessandro Tanaka offered insights into Adult Swim's adaptation of Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose, Langdon Foss, and Alé Garza's Get Jiro!

Back in April, the word came down that Brian Gatewood and Alessandro Tanaka's (Sharper, Superstore) upcoming animated series adaptation of writers Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose and artists Langdon Foss and Alé Garza's Get Jiro! would be a headliner at SXSW London. Thanks to an exclusive interview with Deadline Hollywood, we're getting some insights on what we can expect from Tanaka – beginning with casting news. Previously, we learned that Brian Tee (Expats, Chicago Med) and Garret Dillahunt (Lanterns) had joined the voice cast. You can now add Titus Welliver (Bosch), Alison Pill (Scott Pilgrim), and Justin Kirk (The Vampire Lestat) to that list. Here are some of the highlights from the piece:

Tanaka Describes "Get Jiro!" & The Show's Dystopian Los Angeles/Tokyo Mash-Up Setting: "Everybody's needs are being met digitally, whether it's sex or travel, you can put on goggles and go anywhere, but the one thing you cannot do is eat and taste food, and because of that, chefs have become the most powerful people in Los Angeles. They're like gangsters as they take each other out. The comic starts where this mysterious Japanese sushi chef (Jiro) lands in Los Angeles, and he starts playing everyone against each other. As the series continues, we see that there's a whole method to his madness, and the entire thing is like him creating a recipe for the grand finale. A lot of food, mayhem, and violence happens."

"Get Jiro!" Gets the Food Right – Exactly How Bourdain Would've Wanted: We really needed to make sure, obviously, that we got the food right, We got this guy named Matt Goulding, who was a coworker and a very good friend of Bourdain's. He would read every script, look at every animatic, and watch every episode."

Viewers Can Expect a Number of Cinematic Styles/Influences: "Kurosawa was a big part of the comic; it feels a lot like 'Yojimbo.' We're dealing with such a cinephile [in Bourdain], and Brian and I are also huge lovers of cinema, so we wanted to make sure that every episode had a very cinematic flair."

Tanaka on Expanding Beyond "Get Jiro!" and "Get Jiro! Blood & Sushi": "We had to expand on what was already there, which includes creating a couple of new characters, some extra storylines. There's one [new] villain, and we'll just refer to him as the cannibal, that hopefully people will enjoy, but mostly it was about taking the characters that were already there and just deepening them and finding more about them."

"Great fun yesterday voicing a character for this new animated series. Keep yer eyes peeled for #GetJiro!" Dillahunt wrote the caption for a December 2024 post that included a look at him in the recording studio and an episode script cover for "Cage Free," penned by Jordan Blum.

Produced for Adult Swim by Warner Bros. Animation, the ten-episode half-hour animated series is set in a not-too-distant future L.A., where master chefs rule the town and people literally kill for a seat at the best restaurants. A mysterious sushi master named Jiro enters a bloody culinary war and begins to craft his recipe for revenge. If the series can come even close to matching the look and vibe of the DC/Vertigo graphic novels, then Adult Swim could have another Emmy-winning animated series on its hands – never a bad thing. Adapted by Tanaka and Gatewood, Adult Swim's Get Jiro stems from Warner Bros. Animation. The animated series is directed by Rick Morales, with Jonathan Hoekstra handling artistic direction.

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