Asmik Ace adds cast to 'Wood'

Film to star Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi

By MARK SCHILLING

TOKYO -- Tran Anh Hung's adaptation of Haruki Murakami's international bestseller "Norwegian Wood" will star Kenichi Matsuyama, Rinko Kikuchi and newcomer Kiko Mizuhara, distrib Asmik Ace revealed on Wednesday in Tokyo.

The pic itself was announced last July with Asmik Ace and Fuji TV co-producing. Release is skedded for fall of 2010.

Matsuyama is best known internationally as the sweets-addicted detective L of the three "Death Note" pics. Kikuchi was nommed for a best supporting actress Oscar as the hearing-impaired schoolgirl in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Babel." She also stars in the Isabel Coixet Cannes competition entry "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo."

Matsuyama will play the pic's troubled college student hero, Kikuchi, the lover of his close friend, and Miizuhara, a model making her first screen appearance, the hero's classmate.

Published in 1987, the novel has sold 9.2 million copies and been translated in 36 languages. French-Vietnamese Tran, who first came to international attention in 1993 with "The Scent of Green Papaya," has recently completed the Josh Hartnett, Elias Koteas and Lee Byung-hun thriller "I Come With the Rain."