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” 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
