on oversea of his groups, Naoki decided that films would be his next move, and set up his goal of building an international base acting career. Therefore, Naoki started to take acting lessons and English courses in the same year. But it was in 2017 that he finally debut on the big screen in the film Tatara Samurai, a film that competed in the World Competition Section of the 40th Montreal World Film Festival and won the award for the Best Artistic Contribution. Naoki played Shinpei, a friend from childhood to Gosuke, the main character, and he stated that his experience in dancing has helped him to perform Japanese sword fighting scene since this two are not so far away. He won the Best Supporting Actor Award at the Auckland International Film Festival (New Zealand). On 19 August, the third film of the High&Low franchise, High&Low The Movie 2 / End of Sky, was released, and Naoki played Genji Kuki, a samurai-like killer, and leader of Kuki gang of Kuryu Group. He revived his role in High&Low The Movie 3 / Final Mission, which was released on 11 November. With pure love for entertainment and having seen its possibility as Exile's and Sandaime J Soul Brothers' member, Naoki continues to broaden his horizon and involves himself in the planning and production of projects that expand the possibilities of dance performances. In 2017, Naoki produced a music video, "Here I Stand -Dance Ver."- by R&B singer Jay'ed, as director for the first time. He choreographed the dance move for the song, and dance alongside Harumi Sato in the music video. The music video was released on YouTube on 11 August. He also produced and performed in the Sword Cutting(辻斬り) musical for the drama × entertainment show "Uzumasa Edo Sakaba" in the same year, which was shown at Kyoto Studio Park and contained scenes of the Samurai Sword Dance Performance, which is a collaboration of sword performance and dance performance. In 2018, Naoki appeared again on the runway of Yohji Yamamoto HOMME 2018–2019 AW Paris Collection. After Naoki's fateful meeting with Ridley Scott, Netflix announced in 2018 that Naoki would fill out the lethal love triangle with Alicia Vikander and Riley Keough of Earthquake Bird, a film executive-produced by Ridley Scott. The film marked his first foray into American cinema, and Naoki starred as Teiji, a Tokyo photographer who drove a wedge