Battle Royale is based on Koushun Takami's 1999 novel, it was adapted into a film. It was also turned into a manga series. The story, children are gassed and then awaken on an island. The 42 children are given food, water, and a random weapon, and told that must kill their classmates until only one survives. They have a time limit, and wear collars that prevent them from escaping. If they try to escape their collars will explode.
The LA Times reports:
In the last few weeks, the CW has had talks with the project's Hollywood representatives about the possibility of turning the property into an English-language show, said a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. The talks were preliminary, but if a deal could be reached, the network would acquire rights to Koushun Takami’s underlying novel, then unpack and expand on it for an hour long dramatic series.
When CW was asked about the story they did confirm that discussions had taken place, but would not elaborate. Joyce Jun, an attorney that represents the U.S. rights to
Battle Royale says there is no deal in place.
Battle Royale is incredibly violent and disturbing at times as it does show children killing each other. While
The Hunger Games avoided actually showing the voilence,
Battle Royale thoroughly embaraced, each scene seemed to get more visually brutal as the story went along. And don't take any of that as a negative,
Battle Royale is very entertaining and doesn't an excellent job of balancing the violence so that it doesn't consume the story.