You Can Now Own a Shooting Script for Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Throne of Blood’
#Akira Kurosawa#Throne of Blood#Shooting Script#Rare Books#Film Memorabilia#California International Antiquarian Book Fair#Peter Harrington#Shakespeare Adaptation
📌 Key Takeaways
A shooting script for Akira Kurosawa's 'Throne of Blood' is being auctioned at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair
The script features handwritten annotations about set design and atmosphere from an anonymous crew member
The estimated price is £70,000 (approximately $95,000)
This is the third Kurosawa script handled by Peter Harrington, demonstrating the rarity of such film artifacts
📖 Full Retelling
Peter Harrington, a rare bookseller, is offering a shooting script for Akira Kurosawa's 1957 film 'Throne of Blood' at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair taking place February 27 to March 1, 2026, with an estimated price of £70,000 (approximately $95,000), as the annotated document provides rare insight into the film's atmospheric creation process. The shooting script, which features handwritten annotations by an anonymous crew member, contains detailed notes about set design and atmosphere that guided the filming of Kurosawa's adaptation of Shakespeare's 'Macbeth.' According to Joseph Bills, a bookseller and cataloger at Peter Harrington, the script includes pencil drawings of how scenes should be laid out and shot, with specific notes about environmental conditions. 'You can see in the notes next to the little diagrams of the shots that 'this should be from a particularly foggy day' or 'this needs to be a bit rainy' or 'you should just about be able to see the castle in the distance,' Bills explained to IndieWire. These annotations offer a unique window into the meticulous planning that went into creating the film's distinctive atmospheric qualities. The rare bookseller also possesses another Kurosawa shooting script, for 'Ran' (1985), which differs significantly in its annotations. While the 'Throne of Blood' script focuses on environmental design and atmosphere, the 'Ran' script, which belonged to assistant cameraman Hidehiro Igarashi, contains technical details about lens focal lengths, camera angles, and distances. Bills had to verify the authenticity of the 'Throne of Blood' script by matching its notes to sequences in the film itself, a process he described as requiring careful cross-referencing between scene numbers and film timestamps.
🏷️ Themes
Film History, Rare Collectibles, Cinematic Artistry
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明, Kurosawa Akira; March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. With a bold and dynamic style strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it, he is widely regarded as one of the gre...
Shooting Script is a first person narrative novel by English author Gavin Lyall, first published in 1966. The book was selected as number 99 in the Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time, a list published by the Crime Writers' Association in 1990.
Throne of Blood (Japanese: 蜘蛛巣城, Hepburn: Kumonosu-jō; lit. 'The Spider Web Castle') is a 1957 Japanese epic jidaigeki film co-written, produced, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa, with special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. The film transposes the plot of English dramatist William Shakespeare's pl...
