Battle Royale is Finally Coming to the United States...in 3-D
Great news: Kinji Fukasaku's controversial and totally brilliant kids-killing-other-kids film Battle Royale is finally getting a release in the United States. Not-as-great news: Anchor Bay has picked up the theatrical rights to the 3-D conversion of the film, along with non-3-D rights for its less controversial and not-at-all-brilliant sequel. They are planning a 2011 release. If the timing works, they should go balls-out and releases the first film the same weekend as The Hunger Games. [Tokyo Graph via ONTD]
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In all fairness, Battle Royale was directed by Kinji Fukasaku, not Kenji Fukasaku, his son. However, he was there to help on the first one and actually finished directing the sequel after his father, the great Kinji Fukasaku died during production.
Hey, thanks - Kenji was a typo and I'm an idiot. It's fixed now. His son is actually Kenta Fukasaku for whatever it's worth. He's the one supervising the 3-D conversion, which I'm still pretty sure we don't need.
I saw the film when it was first released and thought it was pretty bad. But apparently the video release in Japan was a new cut that "restored over 20 minutes of character development, featured improved special effects, and expanded on the story's thematic elements." Do you know anything about this?
Gods damn it, stop with the frakking 3D already.