Promotional campaign launch event of new movie "Shippu Rondo"

The promotional campaign launch event of new movie "Shippu Rondo" was held in Tokyo on 17 November where a 2-storey bus wrapped with the promotional poster will begin its tour within the capital from 17 November for a period of one week. The movie is based on the same-titled novel by Higashino Keigo and features Abe Hiroshi in the leading role of Kuribayashi who is a researcher tasked to find a biochemical weapon hidden at the ski resort and is assisted by a patrol member played by Okura Tadayoshi and a snowboarder played by Oshima Yuko.

Cast members Abe, Oshima, Okura and Muro Tsuyoshi appeared at the event where Abe expressed amazement at seeing how big the poster was and embarrassment at seeing his face plastered on the bus. He remarked that although he thinks that this will be a good promotional method, he also called out to the drivers not to be too distracted and cause accidents while looking at the bus.

As the movie was shot at Nozawa Onsen's ski resort in Nagano Prefecture in February this year, artifical snow was created at the event to coincide with the movie's location setting and the cast even had a tape-cutting ceremony to launch the bus. Upon seeing this, Abe said that they should probably go on a bus parade in Ginza like the Olympic athletes. He also remarked that the biggest selling points of this movie are its speedy storyline and amazing scenes at the snow mountains which will allow the audience to laugh and be entertained.

Despite being at the onsen resort, Abe did not go to the public bath as told by the staff since this would cause the tourists to be overly excited at seeing him and create a disturbance to others. As such, he always had to use the onsen bath in his room. However, upon hearing that Oshima went to the onsen every day without a care, he was filled with regret and wished that he could have gone ahead with his plan instead.

In one of the scenes when Muro's character was tailing Oshima's character, she remarked jokingly that Muro deliberately fell down at the back so as to attract attention. Okura who was at the front in the scene with Oshima, chipped in to say that Muro didn't have any issues during the rehearsal which led the latter to defend himself that it was a show of him being too immersed in acting and was not done on purpose.

The movie will be shown in cinemas from 26 November.

Sources: Sponichi / Oricon / Eiga.com