Akira Kurosawa's forgotten script, Mask, will now be made into a film

Sometimes, scripts have a strange way of turning up long after its writer is dead and gone, and the renowned Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa’s Mask appears to have come into the view of two Chinese film majors.

The studios in China, Huayi Brothers (who made Dragon Blade and Mojin: The Lost Legend among others) and CKF Pictures (with a blockbuster like Chongqing Hot Pot to its credit) will produce Mask.

In a note, Chen Kuo-Fu, founder of CKF Pictures, said: “Mask is one of Kurosawa’s movies that never made it to the screen. So we thought, why don’t we make the film for him?

Kurosawa -- who died in 1998 when he was 88 and after an illustrious career of 57 years and 30 movies -- wrote the script for The Mask of the Black Death, which was based on Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, titled, The Masque of the Red Death.

The auteur was all set to helm the film in 1998, but a stroke intervened. And he died later that year.

The Mask of the Black Death is set in Russia, and is the terrifying story of how the people there face the deadly threat of plague and how the country’s prince shuts himself inside his palace, totally ignoring the deaths, sufferings and tragedies of his subjects.

It is not yet clear how soon Mask will be made.