Tuesday, 13 October 2026
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Toei and 13 Studio Adapt Junji Ito's The Hanging Balloons as Thai Film

It is the second Ito short story in a year to be set up as a Thai-linked live-action feature, following the jointly produced The Long Hair in the Attic.

Reporting from 1 source: Anime News Network.

Toei and 13 Studio Adapt Junji Ito's The Hanging Balloons as Thai Film

Toei and Thai production company 13 Studio are producing a Thai-language feature film of Junji Ito's horror short "Kubitsuri Kikyu" (The Hanging Balloons), announced Tuesday. Thai director Taweewat Wantha is directing. The film moves the story's setting to Thailand while keeping the original's eerie worldview. The short debuted in Asahi Sonorama's Monthly Halloween in 1994 and inspired a Japanese live-action film in 2000 and a 2023 Netflix anime episode.

Taweewat Wantha is set to direct a Thai-language film of "Kubitsuri Kikyu," the Ito short that Viz Media published in Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories as "Hanging Blimp" in 2017. The adaptation relocates the story to Thailand, a new interpretation that Toei says respects the original's eerie worldview.

The choice of director keeps the project inside Thailand's horror filmmaking circle: Wantha's credits include Death Whisperer 2, Tha Rae: The Exorcist, and the upcoming Dawn of Soengsang. The source story itself is short, which leaves the film's running time as one of the open questions.

Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.

The Hanging Balloons Toei 13 Studio Junji Ito Taweewat Wantha

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