Get Ready for the Wildest Ride: Odagiri Joe’s ‘THE Oliver’s Dog, (Gosh!!) This Bastard Movie’ Hits the Big Screen
The TV drama “Oliver the Dog, (Gosh!!) This Guy” was broadcast on NHK in 2021. This original project, which Joe Odagiri had been working on, was written, directed, and edited by Odagiri himself. For some reason, only Aoba Ippei (Sosuke Ikematsu), a handler in the police dog division of the forensic science department, sees his partner, the police dog Oliver, as an old man in a dog costume who is obsessed with alcohol, cigarettes, and women… What’s more, the mascot role of Oliver is played by Joe Odagiri himself, in a bizarre setting. When the show started airing, the luxurious cast of actors from various fields excited social media with comments such as “a dizzying luxurious cast” and “what kind of festival is this?”, and the original story that overturns the common sense of drama became a hot topic with each episode.
Oliver, a womanizer, gets all lovey-dovey when women who see him as a real dog run up to him, saying, “He’s so cute!”, despite him being a dog. Ippei looks at Oliver with a cold eye, but warns the women not to touch him because he has fleas and lice, and viewers are hooked on the quirky incidents that the two-person (or one and one dog?) buddy gets caught up in. The chemical reaction of EGO-WRAPPIN’s music, including the theme song “The Hunter,” which colors the worldview of the show, also became a hot topic, and after the broadcast of all three episodes, there were many voices of people feeling sad.
Due to its popularity, Season 2 will be broadcast in 2022 with new cast members, and the increasingly chaotic world view is packed with surreal jokes, captivating even more viewers than Season 1. Every time an episode is broadcast, it is flooded with an explosive number of comments on social media, became the number one global trend on Twitter (now X), and became a social phenomenon. Its reputation is not limited to viewers, but has also been highly praised in various fields, such as winning the Grand Prix for Best Drama at the Tokyo Drama Awards 2022 and the Monthly Galaxy Award.
The legendary drama “Oliver the Dog, (Gosh!!) This Guy” will be released in theaters in the fall of 2025 as “THE Oliver the Dog, (Gosh!!) This Guy Movie” distributed by Avex Film Labels. Joe Odagiri will be the screenwriter, director, and editor, and will continue to play Oliver (the man in the costume).
With the announcement of the film adaptation, Odagiri also released a visual of Oliver, who plays himself, standing in front of a mysterious, glowing door. What does this door mean? Regarding the film adaptation of this work, Odagiri said, “I tend to want to open doors that are in strange places, and I always press the switch of, ‘Why is it in a place like this?'” and, looking back on his feelings when making the drama, he said, “The TV series ‘Oliver the Dog, (Gosh!!) This Guy’ was also a work that I took on with that feeling, trying to pry open the door of TV dramas that are closing.” Regarding the film adaptation, he said, “Now that live-action movies with original scripts have become a rare species, what will you see behind this door? I would be happy if the scenery is shining,” without touching on the contents of the film, and even including the possibility that this door has nothing to do with the main story, expectations are high for the visuals, which have a different atmosphere from the drama version, and the director’s comments.