Disney+ and Hulu are opening the doors to Night Tales Club, a six-episode Japanese supernatural anthology featuring filmmakers Kurosawa Kiyoshi and Shimizu Takashi. The series is scheduled to premiere in January 2027.
Yamada Takayuki leads the project as Hojo, a high-flying businessman obsessed with unexplained phenomena. Serving as the anthology’s storyteller, Hojo believes ghosts, curses and other paranormal events are “bugs” — glitches that may expose a hidden conspiracy.
His search for answers drives the series’ central setup. Hojo offers JPY20 million ($126,000) in gold to anyone prepared to attend his gathering, known as the Night Tales Club, and share a firsthand supernatural experience backed by proof. The six accounts presented to Hojo form the individual stories, while his pursuit of the truth runs through the series.
Six Stories, Seven Filmmakers
Each episode adapts a different tale from author Sawamura Ichi’s collection of short horror stories. Sawamura also handled the screen adaptations, bringing his own material from the page to the six-part production.
Kurosawa, whose credits include Cure and Wife of a Spy, directs one episode. Shimizu, known for Ju-on and The Inugami Family, also takes charge of an installment.
The remaining anthology episodes are directed by Katayama Shinzo, whose credits include Gannibal and The Human Vapor; Sode Yukiko, known for Aristocrats and All the Lovers in the Night; Sakashita Yuichiro, whose work includes I Can’t Cry With Your Face and Blonde; and Nakamura Yosuke, credited on Higuma!! and Poison Girl.
A seventh filmmaker, Nakajima Kenji, directs the Hojo sequences that frame the supernatural accounts. Nakajima’s credits include The Naked Director and Tokyo Swindlers.
Wakabayashi Yusuke and Yamamoto Teruhisa produce the series.
Sawamura welcomed the prospect of seeing his stories move to the screen. “As the original author of these stories, I feel an enormous sense of surprise and joy that they will soon be available on screen to scare audiences around the world,” he said.
A Broader Japanese Slate
Night Tales Club joins Disney+’s growing selection of Japanese series. The service already carries Gannibal, centered on a police officer who encounters something sinister in a remote village. Katayama’s involvement in both projects gives the new anthology a direct creative connection to that existing title.
Disney+ also offers Land of Tanabata, which follows a college student with an apparently pointless power as he investigates a murder. Its lighter Japanese programming includes the cross-cultural romantic comedy Merry Berry Love and the comedy variety show The One Shot.
ShowBiz Take
The strength of Night Tales Club lies in the way it combines six distinct adaptations with a continuing mystery. Each director gets an individual episode, but Yamada’s Hojo and the separately directed framing sequences give the anthology a recurring character and a single driving question.
That structure also allows Sawamura’s stories to retain their episodic form while becoming part of Hojo’s larger hunt for evidence. The offer of gold, the demand for firsthand testimony and the insistence on proof establish clear rules for the Night Tales Club before its supernatural accounts even begin.
The project’s filmmaking roster is another significant part of the announcement. Rather than placing all six stories with one director, the series divides them among Kurosawa, Shimizu, Katayama, Sode, Sakashita and Nakamura, with Nakajima overseeing the Hojo material that connects them.
What Happens Next?
Night Tales Club is set to arrive on Disney+ and Hulu in January 2027. Its six episodes will introduce six separate supernatural accounts as Hojo attempts to determine whether the strange events presented to him are evidence of the hidden conspiracy he believes exists.