CJ Entertainment will adapt “The Vanished” into a film:

CJ Entertainment Will Develop, Finance and Produce “THE VANISHED” Based on Best-Selling Novel for US market

We have some exciting news from CJ Entertainment, South Korea’s leading entertainment conglomerate, who announced today that the company will produce a feature film adaption of best-selling French nonfiction book THE VANISHED for the US market. The VANISHED deal comes on the heels of CJ Entertainment revealing its plan last month to produce and release a minimum of 20 local films overseas in more than 10 languages annually by 2020. The deal also marks the second French novel adaption for CJ Entertainment in the US, following the 2013 hit film SNOWPIERCER, directed by Bong Joon Ho and starring Chris Evans, Song Kang Ho, Octavia Spencer, Ed Harris, and Tilda Swinton, which CJ adapted from the French graphic novel titled “Le Transperceneige.”

Written by Léna Mauger and Stéphane Remael, THE VANISHED tells the powerful true story of the disappearance of people in Japan. Every year, nearly one hundred thousand Japanese vanish without a trace.  Known as the johatsu, or the “evaporated,” they are often driven by shame and hopelessness, leaving behind lost jobs, disappointed families and mounting debts.  In THE VANISHED, the authors uncover the human faces behind the phenomenon, including those who left, those who stayed behind and those who help orchestrate the disappearances.The quest to learn the stories of the johatsu weaves its way through: A Tokyo neighborhood so notorious for its petty criminal activities that it was literally erased from the maps; Reprogramming camps for subpar bureaucrats and businessmen to become “better” employees; the “suicide” cliffs of Tojinbo, patrolled by a man fighting to save the desperate; and desolate Fukushima in the aftermath of the tsunami.