Paprika: Birds of Prey's Cathy Yan to direct a live-action series based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel (2025)

If this is a dream, please, don’t wake me up. Deadline reports that Cathy Yan is developing a live-action series inspired by Yasutaka Tsutsui’s mind-bending novelPaprika. The project is happening at Amazon Studios and Hivemind, with Yan directing and executive producing.

According to the novel’s official description,Paprikapresents an imaginative narrative about a psychiatric institute that develops technology to invade people’s dreams.

“When prototype models of a dream-invading device go missing at the Institute for Psychiatric Research, it transpires that someone is using them to drive people insane. Threatened personally and professionally, brilliant psychotherapist Atsuko Chiba has to journey into the world of fantasy to fight her mysterious opponents. As she delves deeper into the imagination, the borderline between dream and reality becomes increasingly blurred, and nightmares begin to leak into the everyday realm. The scene is set for a final showdown between the dream detective and her enemies, with the subconscious as their battleground and the future of the waking world at stake.”

Ash Sarohia, Yan’s producing partner, joins the project as an executive producer through the duo’s Rewild studio. Masi Oka and Hivemind’s Jason F. Brown executive produce.

Yan released her first feature,Dead Pigs, in 2018. In 2020 she became the first Asian woman to direct a superhero film with the release of DC’sBirds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn. The colorful, quirky, and mature-rated film paired Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn with Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s Helena Bertinelli, Jurnee Smollett’s Dinah Lance, Rosie Perez’s Renee Montoya, and Ella Jay Basco’s Cassandra Cain for a wild ride fueled by feminism, ferocious laughs, and life-altering egg sandwiches.

Satoshi Kon adapted Tsutsui’sPaprikainto an animated film released in 2006. Directed and co-written by Kon with Seishi Minakami,Paprikais considered one of the most spell-binding and visually splendiferous Japanese animated films of all time.

Are you excited about Yan’sPaprikaseries? I am! I love the novel, as well as Kon’s animated adaptation. I can’t wait to see how Yan adapts the material into a live-action series. For me, this news is a dream come true!

About the Author

Born and raised in New York, then immigrated to Canada, Steve Seigh has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. He started with Ink & Pixel, a column celebrating the magic and evolution of animation, before launching the companion YouTube series Animation Movies Revisited. He's also the host of the Talking Comics Podcast, a personality-driven audio show focusing on comic books, film, music, and more. You'll rarely catch him without headphones on his head and pancakes on his breath.