Lionsgate has put out the trailer for Karōshi, a near-future action thriller from the people behind John Wick. Jennifer Ouellette at Ars Technica called it a killer trailer and put the film at the top of her list of movies to see in 2027. The title is a Japanese word for death from overwork, so you know the plot before anyone draws a sword. The villain is an employer.
A note on credits, since the marketing leans hard on one name. Chad Stahelski, who directed the John Wick films, is a producer here, through his company 87Eleven. Takashi Doscher wrote and directed it. Lionsgate released the trailer on November 5, and the film opens in US theaters on February 5, 2027, according to Screen Rant. That is the “early next year” Ars mentioned, and a week after the January 29 date announced earlier.
Here is the official premise:
Karōshi is an action-thriller set in a near-future Manhattan, where corporate loyalty and cultural tradition have reshaped everyday life. When a mysterious outsider infiltrates a powerful company after a worker’s death, he exposes the violent system hidden beneath its polished surface.
The company is Ikigai Technologies. Ikigai is the Japanese idea of a reason for living, the sort of word that ends up on a mug in the breakroom. Naming a firm that kills its staff after the meaning of life is a very good joke about corporate branding. The outsider is played by Teo Yoo of Past Lives, and his character is named Hiro. Ars called that “aptly named”, and I can’t improve on it. The cast also includes Takehiro Hira from the 2024 miniseries Shōgun, Giancarlo Esposito, Cynthia Erivo, Bill Camp, Richard Harmon, Isabel May and Show Kasamatsu.
Screen Rant says the trailer describes the company as following the path of the samurai. It shows employees falling to their deaths, being choked out and being hacked apart with blades. The John Wick films were always about violent institutions with rules: hotels, coins, debts that must be paid. Putting that kind of institution in a corporate office isn’t much of a stretch. Plenty of employers already have a code of conduct and a mission statement. This one also has blades.
Anyway, the thing in the title is real, and the jokes should stop there.
Karōshi is a recognized phenomenon in Japan and much of Asia, and, as Ars notes, in Sweden too. The usual physical causes are heart attacks and strokes brought on by stress. There is a separate word, karōjisatsu, for suicide caused by overwork. In Japan the term carries legal weight, because the state counts these deaths through its workers’ compensation system. A family files a claim, and the labour ministry decides whether work caused the death or illness. If it did, compensation is paid. The number reported each year is the number of approved claims. It is not a count of everyone whose job wore them out.
Those numbers keep climbing. In the fiscal year to March 2026, a record 1,310 people received compensation for overwork-related death or illness, the Japan Times reported in July. That was the fourth record year in a row. Of those, 1,086 cases were work-related mental disorders such as depression, and 224 were work-related strokes and heart attacks. Claims hit a record too: 6,212, up 1,402 from the year before, Japan Today reported. Divide one by the other and about 21% of claims were approved. The 1,310 includes illnesses as well as deaths.
The government’s annual white paper on karōshi, which a 2014 prevention law requires, gave slightly different figures in October. It said 4,958 workers filed mental-disorder claims and 1,082 were approved, a record for the seventh year running. Of those, 76 involved suicide or attempted suicide, the Japan Times reported. The ministry credits part of the increase to greater public awareness of overwork deaths and workplace harassment. That may be true. It also means the count goes up when more people know to file, which tells you the count was never complete.
All this comes as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government plans to loosen labour rules to allow longer working hours, the Japan Times reported in July. One branch of the state is recording more workers harmed by long hours while another is clearing the way for more of them.
On screen, the violent system under the polished surface gets exposed by a mysterious outsider with a sword, in time for a February release. In real life, it gets exposed one claim at a time, by families who have to prove the overtime.