Screen Daily is reporting that Toei is getting ready to convert Kinji Fukasaku’s defining film Battle Royale into three dimensions.
It’s a pretty bizarre choice for conversion, isn’t it? Sure, it’s an utterly amazing film that stunned nearly everyone when it hit back in 2000, but it doesn’t seem like the kind of film that would benefit from the treatment, at all. But it might help some of you to know that Fukasaku’s son Kenta Fukasaku (the guy who picked up the reigns from him on Battle Royale 2) is helping with the new transfer.
If you haven’t seen the film, think Lord of the Flies, but gorier and with Japanese schoolkids. It’s the future, and the adults are getting fearful of an increasingly violent youth population, deciding to thin them out with the “Battle Royale Act”. Every year a class of students is chosen, dumped an island and given weapons, and left for three days until there’s only one remaining. You really, really should have seen it by now.
Royale will be ready for market screenings this October and get a
theatrical release in Japan on November 20th. No word on it expanding
to any other countries.
Let’s just hope they let the second Battle Royale stay buried, a film so bad
it actually killed Fukasaku after shooting only one scene.