They have made a live action version of GANTZ, which all by itself is amazing news. It is going to play in a limited number of theaters in the US for one night only as part of its world premier on January 20th, 2011, as yet another Fathom Events Original. And yes, if you click on that last link and enter your zip code, you will get to see just how close to you this show will be, and grab tickets if you are so inclined.
If you haven’t read the manga or watched the anime, the basic premise is simple. An alien sphere with a cybernetically integrated dead body manifests in a vacant apartment in Tokyo, and begins gathering other dead people. It does not communicate verbally or even directly with them, but makes a small handful of rules known to them by physical example. The quicker a given person picks up on the rules and figures out how to abide by/exploit them, the higher the odds get that they might survive the current situation, even though a prerequisite to being chosen was being dead.
It uses a Trek-like beaming technology to grab them a split second before they actually die, and makes it known that if they complete a certain number of missions for it, they will be released unharmed and alive. If they fail, they will be beamed back to a fraction of a second before the moment of their death to suffer their original fate.
If they are damaged, no matter how seriously, during the mission, but are still alive when beamed back to the apartment, the beaming process will rebuild them whole and well, by integrating the recording of their physical bodies it stored of their molecular state when it first appropriated them, but with their updated current memory gestalt. If they die before being beamed back, they have died the final death.
While they are on their missions for the sphere, no one in the normal physical world will be able to perceive them on any level, although their mission targets will have no problem observing them. Which makes it a bit difficult to get help from your friends and family to escape, or even flag down a passing police car, but makes it very simple for your targets to target you in return.
And the final detail; your mission is to kill your targets, with no way of knowing if they are monsters worthy of death, out to kill off humanity, or victims the sphere has decided would be amusing to watch die. Each and every mission, the clock is ticking; how will you choose this time?