The hotel in Masquerade Hotel doesn't exist. No real luxury Tokyo property would give a film crew weeks of access, so the production built the lobby on Toho Studio 8, Japan's biggest soundstage. The exterior was a wedding venue in Yokohama. The guest rooms were shot at the Royal Park Hotel in Nihonbashi, the actual place Keigo Higashino used as his model when writing the novel. Editors stitched all three into one building.
It was the first time Takuya Kimura and Masami Nagasawa had worked together on screen. Director Masayuki Suzuki already knew Kimura from the Hero franchise. Here, Kimura plays a detective going undercover as hotel staff to catch a killer.
People on Backlot are catching up with this one. The sequel, Masquerade Night (2021), picks right up with the same team.
No comments yet