Were you hoping for a Battle Royale television series? It looks like it might not happen, according to an exec. at CW. CW were hoping to hop on the teen survival genre after the huge success of The Hunger Games, however, the concept hasn’t made it to the pickup stage. The network was actually working on two series, the other being The Selection, but that also has failed to make the cut.
The Battle Royale series was based on the Japanese thriller of the same name, a highly controversial film about students being forced to battle until death in a government sponsored act. The series is currently in discussion phase, but speaking to Collider, CW president Mark Pedowitz said they were still trying to see if it could work out.
What seems to be the issue? The whole premise of the story — students killing each other. Seems like quite a hard-hitting story to tell on the small screen, and in a series format, too. Pedowitz said that they don’t plan to go in a direction in which the show would become too dark.
“At this point in time, it’s only in development, and we’re not even actually in development. All that existed was a phone call. And we’re not planning to do anything that we cannot get on the air. So, the answer to that question is, no, we’re not going to go in that direction. We’re going to wait to see what happens and how things develop.”
The Selection might have better fortune than Battle Royale since it was dropped from the schedule this year due to basically no room to show it amongst the other shows. The Selection sounds very similar to The Hunger Games, with Pedowitz said they were retooling to see if it is something they would like next season.
“The producers did a really good job. We had an embarrassment of riches with what we ended up picking up. It just wasn’t where we wanted it to be, tone-wise. The producers and writers have gone back and are re-scripting as we speak. We’ll hopefully see something soon or make a determination about whether to go forward. I’m a big believer in the show. I really wanted a show that had a Game of Thrones/The Hunger Gamestone, and we hope it’s The Selection. If it’s not, then we will look at another arena, in terms of that. Battle Royale comes with a nice cult following, as we all know, and might have been one of the predecessors of a lot of these things that we see today.”
Source: Collider
Advertisement
