Shison Jun to star in real-life movie adaptation of novel "Hashire! T Kou Basukebu"

Shison Jun will be starring in the real-life movie adaptation of the late Matsuzaki Hiroshi's novel "Hashire! T Kou Basukebu" (Run! The basketball club of T School) which was his debut work published in 2007 and has 10 installments in the entire series that sold more than 1.2 million copies. The movie directed by Furusawa Takeshi will focus on the first part of the series and feature Shison as the lead character Tadokoro Yoichi. This will be shown in cinemas from autumn this year and filming was done between September and November 2017.

Tadokoro used to be the captain of his junior high school's basketball team and enters private school Hakusui Senior High School as a special student to join the basketball team which is renowned for being a strong team. However, due to the intense bullying within the team, Tadokoro quits the school on his own accord and pledges never to play basketball again. When he transfers to the government school Tadano Senior High School (nicknamed T-Kou), he unwittingly joins the school's basketball which is weak but has a bunch of very interesting and charming teammates which lets Tadokoro remember the joy he had when playing basketball. Just then, the T-Kou team has to take on the Hakusui team during the winter cup tournament.

As Shison has never played basketball before, he underwent 3 months of intensive training under former national player Handa Keishi. Shison commented that he hoped to deliver the results of his training during the tournament scenes in the movie and went all out until he found himself unable to move freely for 2 days due to the exhaustion. However, he felt that it was a very fulfilling experience to be able to devote his all to the filming. His coach Handa was full praise of Shison for being a total beginner and improving so much in a matter of months so he was curious how Shison would become if he continued to train beyond the three month period.

Sources: Eiga.com / Natalie