The following year, Kitamura dropped out of high school, directly telling his teacher and walking out during class, and moved to Australia a week later.

Kitamura attended a school for visual arts in Sydney for two years, after he directly asked the principal to simply let him in, "he thought that I was a funny guy, so he let me in.

[3] The film launched the career of stars Tak Sakaguchi and Hideo Sakaki, and brought Kitamura international recognition when it was released on DVD outside Japan in 2004.

Kitamura's direction of the cutscenes was viewed as controversial, criticism leveled at its Matrix-like action tone and unrealistic stunts performed by the characters.

[8] In 2008, Kitamura made his American filmmaking debut with Midnight Meat Train based on Clive Barker's short horror story of the same name.

[9] The film (starring Bradley Cooper, Vinnie Jones, and Brooke Shields) was distributed by Lionsgate, and released directly to the secondary market on August 1, 2008.

While promoting No One Lives, Kitamura announced that he was working on his "comeback" film in Japan, stating in an interview, "It’s a completely different role than what I’ve done before.

[18] He is also attached to direct Marble City, a revenge film written by Tom Sjolund,[19] as well as Gun Monkeys, from a screenplay by Lee Goldberg based on the novel by Victor Gischler.

[citation needed] In May 2013, Kitamura confirmed that he has written the script for Versus 2, and that Tak Sakaguchi would likely reprise his role from the original film.