Rumor: American TV Network to Produce Battle Royale Series

[The Wooster]

Rumor: American TV Network to Produce Battle Royale Series

The CW Television Network is looking to turn Battle Royale into an hour-long dramatic series.

There's been talk of an American remake of Kinji Fukasaku's film adaptation of Koushun Takami's Battle Royale novel for years. Unfortunately, the recent film release of The Hunger Games, which has quite pithily been labeled "Battle Royale with cheese" [http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/hunger-games-battle-royale-with-cheese-meme.jpg] by internet witmeisters, has killed any chances of a big-budget Western release. Instead, according to the LA Times, The CW Television Network is looking to acquire the rights to the original novel in order to turn it into an hour-long dramatic series. The talks are said to be in the preliminary stages - and the information comes courtesy of an anonymous source - so have your grains of salt handy.

Battle Royale is a dystopian vision of Japan's near future where, every year, a class of middle school kids are shipped off to an island and forced to murder each other. The original novel has been adapted into two films and two manga series to date. A number of different directors, including connoisseur of all things weird and violent, Quentin Tarantino, have expressed an interest in remaking the film for American audiences.

Apparently, producers Roy Lee and Neal H. Moritz were trying to pitch a western version of the movie when the film adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games hit the market.

"Look, there isn't a studio out there that would invest the money to do a Battle Royale feature film remake now," Lee told the Wall Street Journal. "Audiences would see it as just a copy of Games - most of them wouldn't know that Battle Royale came first. It's unfair, but that's reality."

Source: LA Times [http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-battle-royale-could-be-reborn-as-a-tv-show-20120726,0,5414971.story]



Permalink

 

[FalloutJack]

INB4 Hunger Games VS Battle Royale fight-out.

This will probably fail miserably...because of who's making it. Namely, because they're not Japan.

 

[Stomperchomper]

This will probably fail miserably...because of who's making it. Namely, because they're not Japan.

On top of that CW is one the lesser production companies :/

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/

 

[Infernai]

Lets just hope they keep the necrophilia out of this version shall we? Also making it interesting and not utterly boring would be a good thing too, try to do that with this adaption! It ain't hard, just oh i dunno...focus on the premise of highschoolers having to murder each-other rather then their every single waking thought. And again, please keep the necrophilia to a minimum.

And yes, my dislike for the Battle Royale Manga is showing quite strongly today.

 

[Albino Boo]

This will probably fail miserably...because of who's making it. Namely, because they're not Japan.

On top of that CW is one the lesser production companies :/

http://www.cwtv.com/shows/

I don't know after making one tree hill, I think the producers and scriptwriters would be very keen to make a show where annoying teens are killed off each week.

 

[GloatingSwine]

A western remake of BR would be a terrible idea anyway. Even reading the book from a western perspective means that you can't appreciate the subtext on more than an intellectual level. The book is about the way that the Japanese school system is failing students via the competitive examination system that is in place and does not in any way act as useful preparation for students to live in society after school.

 

[Cowabungaa]

An American remake of a foreign, Asian even, franchise?

Color me skeptical at best.

 

[Tanis]

So...yeah, it would suck.

Unless it was put on a network like HBO/Showtime (who have the balls to actually show BLOOD AND GORE), not some some lame ass channel know for 'smallville'.

 

[SenseOfTumour]

I'd suggest this has been put forward because some executive has seen the success of the 'Hunger Games' and 'Walking Dead' and yelled to his underlings 'Quick! find me some old stuff we can remake for an easy quick buck!'

It COULD be good, but unlike the Walking Dead, it'll be tricky to have any reasonable bodycount, while keeping a series going, it's not like they can just ship another few classes of kids in when they're down to the last ten or so.

 

[aba1]

Done properly I think this would be really awesome and entertaining.

 

[FalloutJack]

Done properly I think this would be really awesome and entertaining.

The prevaling notion is that it won't, though. The US has indeed tried to use things from Japan and work it into itself, but many cases show that it doesn't work. Hollywood tried movies and that wasn't...no. Best attempts would be in anime, I think. Battle Royale is live-action, so I've a feeling this won't go over well.

 

[aba1]

Done properly I think this would be really awesome and entertaining.

The prevaling notion is that it won't, though. The US has indeed tried to use things from Japan and work it into itself, but many cases show that it doesn't work. Hollywood tried movies and that wasn't...no. Best attempts would be in anime, I think. Battle Royale is live-action, so I've a feeling this won't go over well.

This is true but attempts that did fail was because they didn't use logic. Things like Dragon Ball for instance do not translate into live action, well that was a obvious call before things even started. Battle Royal was a fairly grounded series however and given the right direction writing it could work much in the same way things like Walking dead or Heroes (first season) worked.

If they are fairly light on the source material it should be hard to Americanize it. They just need to alter the Japanese life style references to ours hire some great writers and have a decent budget and a higher rating. Not saying it would be easy but it is definitely more do-able than many other things.

 

[Mikkaddo]

Even putting aside the whole CW problem, there's still issues with making a "tv series" out of this.

First, will it be set in Japan? if so almost NO ONE in America will understand why it works the way it does, since the original work is as steeped in Japanese Social commentary as you can be without being propaganda for one side or the other.

Next, the actual "Battle Royale" itself that happens each year, as per the book, manga (if memory serves) and the first movie (the second wasn't about the game it was something about terrorism and all) was a 3 day long game. At the end of the 3 days everyone's collar starts to count down until only one is left. The problem with this is, a TV series is meant to be put on tv as a lifelong running story when it's not being pitched by a writer, but the Battle Royale is only 3 days long. How do we do this? make it a mini series that's 3, 1 hour episodes long each one spanning that day? make it a mini series where every season is 3 episodes and it continues on by spanning multiple games? or just ruin things by trying to make a multiple season series about a game that's meant to only last 3 days but change ALL the rules of the original work to make it fit the eternal runtime tv shows strive for?

 

[sideshow]

i'm going to assume their not going to go through with it on the basis that a certain demographic of amercians (the 1 million mum group, fox news, etc) will protest and argue will the whole "the children, think of the children" act even when something like Battle Royale isn't even aimmed at kids in the first place.

i'd love to be wrong. i'd like for this to get made on the basis of how little enough america can come up with when this is their source material.

 

[Gottesstrafe]

Done properly I think this would be really awesome and entertaining.

The prevaling notion is that it won't, though. The US has indeed tried to use things from Japan and work it into itself, but many cases show that it doesn't work. Hollywood tried movies and that wasn't...no. Best attempts would be in anime, I think. Battle Royale is live-action, so I've a feeling this won't go over well.

The fact that a movie is an American/western remake of a Japanese film doesn't necessarily mean it's slated to fail. That's usually the fault of bad directors and screen writers who fail to understand their subject matter and pick up on the subtext, or at the very least take the story into an interesting direction or reinterpretation. Look at A Fistful of Dollars, The Magnificent Seven, The Departed, and (depending on who you talk to) The Ring. Hell, we have Fistful of Dollars to thank for launching Clint Eastwood's career. If the adaptation were to fail, it would probably be because either the creators didn't understand the material they were given or because CW would be hesitant to broadcast high school students butchering each other by the bus loads.

Actually, if we were to just look at the socio-political themes from the Japanese movie, it would probably fit in very well with Alan Moore's dystopian interpretation of the UK depicted in V for Vendetta. Perhaps a compromise?

 

[FalloutJack]

Done properly I think this would be really awesome and entertaining.

The prevaling notion is that it won't, though. The US has indeed tried to use things from Japan and work it into itself, but many cases show that it doesn't work. Hollywood tried movies and that wasn't...no. Best attempts would be in anime, I think. Battle Royale is live-action, so I've a feeling this won't go over well.

The fact that a movie is an American/western remake of a Japanese film doesn't necessarily mean it's slated to fail. That's usually the fault of bad directors and screen writers who fail to understand their subject matter and pick up on the subtext, or at the very least take the story into an interesting direction or reinterpretation. Look at A Fistful of Dollars, The Magnificent Seven, The Departed, and (depending on who you talk to) The Ring. Hell, we have Fistful of Dollars to thank for launching Clint Eastwood's career. If the adaptation were to fail, it would probably be because either the creators didn't understand the material they were given or because CW would be hesitant to broadcast high school students butchering each other by the bus loads.

Actually, if we were to just look at the socio-political themes from the Japanese movie, it would probably fit in very well with Alan Moore's dystopian interpretation of the UK depicted in V for Vendetta. Perhaps a compromise?

I'm not saying that all attempts everywbere will be doomed to fail, or else I wouldn't like certain things that I do, but I DO have a bad feeling about THIS one.

 

[Kyogissun]

>American Television adaptation of Battle Royale

*gasp of joy*

>The CW

...God damn it.

Even still, the story is best suited for a one off movie. No sequel, no continuous story, just the brutal, gruesome and dark tale wherein there's no real 'satisfaction' upon the victory, like there is in Hunger Games.