HBO are reportedly adapting the late Kentarou Miura’s dark fantasy manga Berserk into a live-action series.

Giant Freakin Robot report that, according to their sources, there is still a chance for the series to keep its darker tone and scenes if it is not under the scrutiny of network censors. This suggests the series would be exclusive to HBO Max.

Berserk is a dark fantasy manga telling the story of Guts, a mercenary who comes to work with the Band of the Hawk mercenaries. The manga began in 1989, and continued to tell the story of demons, bloodshed, tragedy, war, the darkness in the human heart, and never giving up.

The series is one of the best selling manga of all time, with over 50 million copies in circulation. The series has had a palpable affect on Japanese media and beyond, including other manga, anime, video games, and more.

Author Kentarou Miura died aged 54 on May 6th of this year from acute aortic dissection, with his death publicized almost two weeks later. The timing of the adaptions discovery is sure to lead to speculation that it was only green-lit after his death, and will be a sore spot for fans regardless due to the reputation of western produced live-action anime adaptions, especially in the case of Netflix.

A poll in May of this year issued to Japanese viewers of video distribution service 1Screen asked what anime titles they wanted to see Hollywood adapt into live-action. The outstanding answer was “nothing.” 

Image: Dark Horse Comics