Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel Paprika has already gotten the adaptation treatment with Satoshi Kon’s 2006 anime (pictured above). Now, it looks like Amazon is adapting the story for a live-action series as well.
According to Deadline, Cathy Yan—who directed Birds of Prey and Dead Pigs—will executive produce and direct the show.
Yasutaka’s novel revolves around a technology that allows others to enter and manipulate your dreams. The titular Paprika is the alter ego of the psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba, the avatar she takes on when entering her patients’ dreams as part of their therapy. Things get more complicated and the line between reality and dreams becomes ever more blurry, however, when her colleague develops a technology that allows multiple people’s dreams to blend together, which could just as likely render their patients insane rather than “cure” them.
In addition to her feature directing, Yan also directed an episode of HBO’s Succession, her first foray into television. Yan will also write and direct the upcoming feature film The Freshening, an adaptation of the sci-fi story by Rachel Khong where the government injects people with a drug that makes everyone else appear to be of the same race and gender that they are.
No news yet on casting for Paprika, much less when it will stream on Prime Video.
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