Pretty high up the list of 'things that I never thought I'd see' would be a Hollywood re-make of the Japanese cult movie Battle Royale. However while checking out some trailers online earlier, I saw a list of 'Future Films'- and there, to my surprise sat the US version of that very film. Surely this had to be a joke?

But there's no doubt, It's listed on IMDB as in development and everything! On closer investigation I learned that work on the remake had been cast into doubt by the tragic real-life events at Virgina Tech. For the uninitiated, the plot sees a class of 15 year old high-school kids, dumped on an island, given weapons and told to kill each other dead, as some kind of far-out way of dealing with juvenile delinquency. You might wonder why they don't just refuse but if they don't cooperate (or try to escape) they have the explosive collars they've all been fitted with detonated. It sounds pretty sick, but it's actually a pretty smart movie that actually manages to actually provide a fairly accurate portrayal of teenagers (apart from all the killing). Considering the touchy nature of the subject, the original movie's never actually been released in America- what chance does a remake stand of getting past the development stage- unless it's so watered down so as to be unrecognisable. Not that that would be any great surprise, given the 'quality' of earlier Hollywood remakes of Japanese flicks.

But ignoring all that if you get the chance, check out the original but whatver you do give the sequel a miss- it's so bad the original director died halfway through production, just to get out of it....