Since the 2010s, it seems like everywhere you look, there’s a new show or video game involving the concept of a “battle royale” – large groups of people duking it out until only a single victor remains. And that’s not a bad thing; the subgenre has given us juggernaut franchises like The Hunger Games, Fortnite is still one of the most popular video games around, and it feels like everyone is on the edge of their seat waiting for the new season of Squid Game. The reason for the surge in popularity is also the origin of the subgenre’s very name: in 2000, director Kinji Fukasaku released the movie Battle Royale, featuring a group of junior high students in Japan being forced to brutally murder each other by the government.

For a long time, American audiences could only catch the movie while abroad or at film festivals, if they were lucky. A particular combination of the extreme content of the movie and the climate around violence in 2000’s America caused distribution negotiations to stall and peter out until over a decade after its original release. That didn’t stop its popularity, though, and by the time the movie finally got a wide release, it had become the cult classic that reinvigorated an entire subgenre.

‘Battle Royale’ Originally Faced Controversy in Japan

Battle Royale, based on the novel of the same name by Koushun Takami, was causing a stir even before its original Japanese release in 2000. The combination of government criticism, extreme violence, and a cast of characters consisting almost entirely of teenagers caused the Eirin (the Japanese equivalent of the MPA) to hit the film with an R15+ rating, which prohibits anyone under the age of 15 from buying a ticket. If audiences weren’t sure after seeing the trailers, this rating confirmed that Battle Royale wasn’t playing around when it came to intensity. It didn’t make the director, Kinji Fukasaku, very happy, however, considering that 15 is the age of both the protagonists and the movie’s target audience. He reportedly encouraged teens to sneak into theaters to watch the movie if they could.

But certain political figures didn’t think the rating went far enough; they feared that the film would cause a spike in teen violence and voiced their concerns to the studio. At the time, Variety reported that the Minister of Education, Nobutaka Machimura, met with studio executives ahead of the movie’s release and asked them to “tone down” future movies. Other politicians reportedly asked the executives not to release the movie at all. Naturally, they did anyway, and nearly 1,000 people attended its premiere at the main Toei theater; the movie earned $1.88 million over its opening weekend.

The Fight for ‘Battle Royale’ in America

Battle Royale made close to $29 million after its release in December 2000. Although that total was shy of its projected $35 million, it only included the Japanese box office numbers. That’s because it actually took two years for the movie to roll out to theaters outside of Japan, and even then, America wasn’t officially included outside of film festivals. The first reported screening of Battle Royale in the United States wasn’t until 2002 in California. After receiving positive reviews in Japan and Europe, the movie slowly but surely achieved cult film status, and it was almost a badge of honor to have seen it as an American. But why was there such a resistance to a wide release in America in the first place? The simplest explanation is timing.

via Collider