I saw it at Sundance 2009 with Jonathan Liebesman’s The Killing Room, the UK just saw the release of The Exam, and both were inspired by numerous films over the years (ranging from Cube to Battle Royale) — Japanese director Hideo Nakata (Ringu, The Ring Two) hopes to do a better job when he pays his subjects $1,200 a day to play a new twisted game entitled The Incite Mill. Read on for the skinny.
Hideo Nakata, the J Horror maestro of “Ring” and “Ring 2” fame, has inked a deal with talent shop Horipro to helm psychological suspenser “The Incite Mill.”

The pic, which is a based on an eponymous bestseller by Honobu Yonezawa, tells a “Big Brother”-ish tale of 10 people who hire on for a “job” paying $1,200 per hour, only to find themselves locked in an underground complex and forced to play a murder game for seven days.

Of the 10 main cast members, eight are repped by Horipro, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary. These include hot young thesps Tatsuya Fujiwara (“Death Note”), Haruka Ayase (“Happy Flight”) and Satomi Ishihara (“No Longer Human”). The two other cast members will be picked soon, one from the Horipro ranks and one through a nationwide audition.

Nakata will starting shooting this March with release skedded for the fall.