Date of Birth: 
Place of Birth: Tokyo, Japan
About Hitomi Hyuga
- Battle Royale (???·?????, Batoru Rowaiaru) is a 2000 Japanese dystopian thriller film directed by Kinji Fukasaku and written by Kenta Fukasaku, based on the 1999 novel by Koushun Takami.
- Starring Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda and Takeshi Kitano, the film follows a group of junior high-school students that are forced to fight to the death by the Japanese totalitarian government.
- The film drew controversy and was banned or excluded from distribution in several countries.
- Toei even refused to sell the film to any United States distributor for a long time, because Toei was worried of potential controversy and lawsuits (until Anchor Bay Entertainment eventually acquired the film in 2010 for direct-to-video release).The film was first screened in Tokyo on more than 200 screens on December 16, 2000, with an R-15 rating, which is rarely used in Japan.
- It was the highest-grossing Japanese-language film for six weeks after its initial release, and it was later released in 22 countries worldwide, grossing approximately $30 million in eight countries.
- The film earned critical acclaim and, especially with its DVD releases, drew a large global cult following.
- It is often regarded as one of Fukasaku's best films, and one of the best films of the 2000s.
- In 2009, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino praised Battle Royale as the best film he had seen in the past two decades.Battle Royale was the last film to be directed by Fukasaku.
- He started working on a sequel, Battle Royale II: Requiem, but he died of prostate cancer on January 12, 2003, after shooting only one scene with Kitano.
- His son Kenta Fukasaku, who wrote the screenplay for both films, completed the film in 2003. Battle Royale became a cultural phenomenon, and has been highly influential in global popular culture.
- Since the film's release, the term "battle royale" has been redefined to refer to a fictional narrative genre and/or mode of entertainment inspired by the film, where a select group of people are instructed to kill each other off until there is a triumphant survivor.
- It has inspired numerous media, including films, manga, anime, comics, visual novels, and video games; the battle royale game genre, for example, is named after the film.
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