George Iida (飯田 譲治, Iida Jōji, born 1 March 1959) is a Japanese film and television director, screenwriter, manga author, and novelist. Iida has worked continually in Japan's film, television, anime and manga industries since the early 1980s, predominantly in the genres of horror and science fiction.
Iida was first discovered when his 8mm short Intermission (Kyukei) was screened at the 1980 PIA Film Festival.[2] For the next few years, Iida found work alternating as a scriptwriter for pink films and as an assistant director for other productions.[3] He was subsequently given the opportunity to direct his own project, the straight-to-video production Cyclops (1987). Iida soon followed this with his theatrical debut, Battle Heater (1989), a horror comedy about a man-eating kotatsu that terrorizes the tenants of a rundown apartment block.
In the 1990s Iida branched out into television, creating the series Night Head (1992–1993), which would go on to spawn an entire franchise including a made-for-TV movie of the same name in 1994 as well as manga and books.[3] An anime series, Night Head Genesis, was subsequently produced in 2006. Other notable productions include the 1998 Rasen, the original sequel to Hideo Nakata's film Ring (before Nakata directed the better known, and otherwise unrelated, Ring 2 in 1999), and the police procedural/horror Another Heaven (2000). Rasen was based on Koji Suzuki's second novel of his Ring Trilogy of the same name, also known as Spiral. Another Heaven was based on one of Iida's own books.
Iida wrote the storyline for his own video game Iida Joji Nightmare Interactive: Moon Cradle. It was released in 1995 for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer.[3]
