A veteran Japanese film director has announced he will begin shooting a movie next year on the wartime Sorge espionage case with focus on two journalists, one German and the other Japanese, who were hanged as Soviet spies.

Masahiro Shinoda, 70, writer and director of the film "Spy Sorge," said he conceived the idea of shooting a film about the incident more than 10 years ago, adding that it will be his final movie before he retires.

The movie will tell the story of Richard Sorge, a German newspaper correspondent, and Hotsumi Ozaki, a Japanese journalist specializing in Chinese affairs and a close aide to wartime Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe.

The two were arrested by Japanese police in October 1941 and executed in Tokyo in 1944.

"Sorge was a spy but at the same time, he was a free man. I'd like to produce an entertainment work that will stir viewers' intellectual curiosity and new feelings about the Showa Era," Shinoda said.

The Showa Era, under the reign of the late Emperor Showa, began in 1926 and lasted until his death in 1989.

The director said he will shoot on location in cities that include Shanghai, Berlin and Moscow, and also use computer graphics in collaboration with the Global Information and Telecommunication Institute at Waseda University, his alma mater. The film has not yet been cast, he added.

The film is scheduled to be released in Japan in 2003, the director said, noting he aims to have the work screened in other countries.

Shinoda is known for such works as "MacArthur's Children" in 1984 and "Owl's Castle" in 1999.