Could a “Battle Royale” TV Show Be Coming to the CW?
The soaring popularity of The Hunger Games proved that the taste for compelling stories about totalitarianism and pitting children against each other for the sake of maintaining fear within these regimes is alive and well in North America. Well that sounds just a little creepy right? Based on my adoration of The Hunger Games, there is more to it than than the compulsory violence among adolescence, but the story told about the people living under these oppressive circumstances and what they do to fight back.
If all this talk of The Hunger Games had you wishing people would pay more attention to Battle Royale, a Japanese film from 2000 that heavily inspired the Suzanne Collins novels, someone in Hollywood was listening. We’re not talking big screen remake for American audiences, but the CW is in talks to bring Battle Royale to the small screen in the form of an English language adaptation to an hour-long dramatic series.
Asked about the CW talks, Joyce Jun, a Hollywood attorney representing U.S. rights to the title, would say only that “there is no deal in place.” A CW spokesman confirmed only there had been some discussion but declined to comment further.
One sticking point to any deal is believed to be the approval of Takami, which according to Japanese law must be secured before any remake moves forward.
While there is still nothing concrete about the project as of yet, the television landscape seems prepared for for a dysotic drama on the teen focused network that has also found success with the supernatural dramas The Vampire Diaries and Secret Circle. The CW had another similar project in the works, The Selection, a dystopian tale of teens fighting for survival, which was shelved for this pilot season, perhaps in hopes that a Battle Royale series would produce better results.
It might be a difficult task to differentiate a Battle Royale television series from the huge presence that is The Hunger Games, but it could be that Hunger Games will provide the popularity that will allow a Battle Royale series to carve out it’s own space on the small screen.
What do you think of the possibility of a Battle Royale TV series?
(via The Mary Sue via The LA Times)
