Similarities to The Hunger Games may have ended plans to bring an English language version of Battle Royale to the big screen…
Lionsgate’s upcoming blockbuster adaptation of The Hunger Games isn’t short of similarities with the wonderful Japanese film and novel, Battle Royale. And it might just be that which has, for better or worse, killed off any chance of an English language Battle Royale remake.
Updating ShockTillYouDrop on his current slate of projects, producer Roy Lee has now admitted that “Hunger Games took a lot of wind out of the sails of [the Battle Royale remake], because of its similar storyline”, adding “I’m not exactly sure any studio – even before Hunger Games – would have taken the creative risks you would have needed to take to make the movie right now”.
That’s unsurprising. The basics of Battle Royale see a bunch of ninth grade school pupils in a bloody, violent fight to the death. The Hunger Games? Well, the ages may vary a little, but there’s still, crucially, the bit where they all have to fight each other, until only one is left standing.
Which all leaves the planned new take on Battle Royale in limbo, and unlikely to escape anytime soon.
Of Lee’s other projects, the Old Boy remake heads into pre-production in January, ahead of the film’s shoot in March. Spike Lee is directing.
Roy Lee is also planning a new film in The Ring franchise, and is looking into doing “a new version of The Grudge”.
More news on these when we get them.
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