Back when we told you Liv Morgan had landed a role in a Takashi Miike movie, all we had to go on was her casting. Now there’s actual footage, and it’s a lot.
NEON released the first trailer for Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo on Monday, and Morgan is right there in it, credited alongside Shun Oguri, Lily James, and Shotaro Mamiya. The film is the latest entry in the Bad Lieutenant series, this time relocated to Tokyo and directed by Miike, the filmmaker behind decades of stylized, ultraviolent Japanese cinema.
Who Liv Morgan Is Playing
Oguri stars as a Tokyo detective spiraling through corruption, addiction, and violence. James plays an FBI agent chasing down the missing daughter of a powerful American family, and that missing daughter is Morgan’s character, putting her at the center of the film’s mystery rather than off in a side plot. The trailer doesn’t give away much of the story, but it packs in a lot of tone: quick cuts of blood, chaos, and Morgan herself, including a shot of her calmly licking frosting off a cupcake right before things get considerably less calm.
It’s a real swing for a wrestler’s first major film credit, and it’s backed by a studio with real prestige behind it. NEON is the distributor behind Parasite and Triangle of Sadness, which puts Bad Lieutenant: Tokyo in different company than the usual wrestler-does-an-action-movie route.
When You’ll Actually Get to See It
There’s still no confirmed release date. The promotional material just says “Coming Soon,” though Morgan has previously said she expected the film out in September. What is confirmed is a premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, running September 10 through 20.
Morgan is currently WWE’s reigning Women’s World Champion, having successfully defended the title against IYO SKY at SummerSlam. Between that and a Takashi Miike film with a TIFF premiere on the way, she’s stacking up one of the stronger years of any wrestler working right now, in the ring or out of it.
