NEON Brings Director Genki Kawamura’s EXIT 8 To Blu-ray August 4th

Kawamura’s Videogame-Based, Box Office Hit Stakes Its Claim As A Masterwork Of The Burgeoning Liminal Horror Genre

Source: NEON

Official Site: https://exit8-movie.toho.co.jp/ (Japan), https://www.neonrated.com/film/exit-8 (US)

Special Thanks to Ezra Scott-Henning and Vanessa Agovida

NEON has announced that the widely-acclaimed, audience favorite EXIT 8 (８番出口, 8-Ban Deguchi, 2025), from rising auteur Genki Kawamura, will be available on Blu-ray starting Tuesday, August 4th.

After premiering at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the Midnight Section and continuing on to Toronto, Busan, and BeyondFest, EXIT 8 hit US theaters on April 10th and opened to number 8 at the box office and has since crossed 4 million dollars domestically. Actor Yamato Kochi who plays The Walking Man, took the internet by storm when he appeared in New York, engaging with hoards of fans in bustling neighborhoods and the city’s subway system. One video ‘Walking Man / Biking Man’ got over 20M organic views across X, Tiktok and Instagram and 1M likes on Instagram alone - a NEON record. While in the US, Genki Kawamura appeared for Q&As across the country including with Guillermo del Toro and The Duffer Brothers.

EXIT 8 was hailed as “an exceptional liminal thriller” by Dread Central’s Josh Korngut. Along with a Critic’s Pick, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote, “EXIT 8 is as fun to watch as it is to mull over.” Justin Chang at The New Yorker called the film “Fiendishly Clever. Elegantly minimalist existential horror. A video-game adaptation that ingeniously subverts its source.” EXIT 8 is also Certified Fresh and the highest rated video game adaptation of all time on Rotten Tomatoes.

The film stars Kazunari Ninomiya (GANTZ, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA), Yamato Kochi, Naru Asanuma, Kotone Hanase and Nana Komatsu. It is written by Genki Kawarmura and Kentaro Hirase. The producers are Yuto Sakata, Kenji Yamada, Akita Yamamoto, and Taichi Ito. EXIT 8 is a Toho and Story Inc. production.

Genki Kawamura is a director, producer, novelist, and screenwriter. In 2012, he published his novel If Cats Disappeared from the World, which became a worldwide bestseller, appearing in translation in 32 countries and selling over 2 million copies. As a producer, Kawamura worked on films including YOUR NAME and SUZUME, directed by Makoto Shinkai; MIRAI and BELLE, directed by Mamoru Hosoda; and MONSTER, directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda. Kawamura directed his first short film, DUALITY, in 2018; it was selected for the Cannes Film Festival. With Hirokazu Kore-eda, he created THE MAKANAI, a Netflix Original Series. His feature-film debut, A HUNDRED FLOWERS, an adaptation of his own novel One Hundred Flowers, won the Silver Shell for Best Director at the San Sebastián International Film Festival in 2022. EXIT 8 marks his second feature film.

Synopsis

Based on the eponymous video game from Kotake Create, a lost man trapped in an endless subway passage sets out to find the elusive and mysterious EXIT 8. His way out is to identify anomalies within the recurring corridor; the rules of his quest are simple:

Do not overlook anything out of the ordinary…

If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately…

If you don’t, proceed in the direction of EXIT 8.

When even a single oversight sends the lost man back to the beginning of his quest, how can he escape this infinite corridor?

Details

Now Available For Digital Rental And Purchase.

Blu-ray Release Date: August 4, 2026
SRP: $34.98
Run Time: 95 Minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Audio: Japanese DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French
Bonus Features: Q&A with Genki Kawamura, The Making of EXIT 8, Trailer

About NEON

In only eight years, NEON has garnered 39 Academy Award® nominations (7 this year), 11 total wins (5 this year), including two Best Picture wins, and has grossed over $400M at the box office. The company continues to push boundaries and take creative risks on bold cinema such as Sean Baker’s ANORA, which recently took home five Academy Awards including Best Picture, and was released in theaters to the highest per-screen average of 2024; as well as Bong Joon Ho’s PARASITE, which made history winning four Academy Awards,, becoming the first non-English-language film to claim Best Picture, and grossed over $54M at the domestic box office.

NEON has built an impressive streak winning the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, with six consecutive wins, including ANORA and PARASITE, as well as ANATOMY OF A FALL, TITANE, and TRIANGLE OF SADNESS. In 2024, NEON was named The Hollywood Reporter’s Independent Studio of the Year and received the Clio Award for Studio of the Year.

Recent NEON releases include Osgood Perkins’ horror film THE MONKEY which is based on the short story by Stephen King and marked NEON’s second biggest opening weekend at the box office following Perkins’ LONGLEGS, which is the highest grossing independent film of 2024 at $75 million domestically.

As a burgeoning leader in the production space, NEON’s recent and upcoming in-house productions include: David Robert Mitchell’s THEY FOLLOW starring Maika Monroe; Michael Covino’s SPLITSVILLE starring Dakota Johnson and Adria Arjona; the highly anticipated Boots Riley feature I LOVE BOOSTERS starring Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, LaKeith Stanfield, Demi Moore, and Eiza González; THE WRONG GIRLS starring Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat; Tilman Singer’s CUCKOO starring Hunter Schafer; and Brandon Cronenberg’s INFINITY POOL. NEON’s international sales outfit handles the company’s in-house titles as well as third party projects.