Rollerball

Rollerball (2002)

Get in the game.

In this fast action-packed thriller, Jonathan, Marcus, and Aurora compete in a dangerous, fierce sport called Rollerball. Although, Johnathan and Marcus try to quit, cruel and vindictive promoter Alexi Petrovich encourages them to still participate.

Date of release
2002-02-08
TMDB
3.9 / 10 (535)
Runtime
1h 38m
Genres
Action, Science Fiction
Director
John McTiernan

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: $25.9M
  • Budget: $70M
  • Earned 0.4× its budget
  • Filmed in: San Francisco and Montreal

Rollerball is a 2002 science fiction sports film directed by John McTiernan. A remake of the 1975 film of the same name, which itself based on William Harrison's short story Roller Ball Murder. The film stars Chris Klein, Jean Reno, LL Cool J, Rebecca Romijn, and Naveen Andrews. While both versions of Rollerball use the same basic premise, the 2002 version has a much greater focus on action sequences, more muted social and political overtones than the original, and takes place in the mid-2000s rather than in a future dystopian 2010s.

Production

The movie was filmed in about 15 weeks, between July 24 and November 2000. The original script, which focused on fleshing out the social commentary of the original film, was completely re-written several times on the orders of director John McTiernan so that it focused more on WWE-like showmanship, including crazy costumes and stunts, while changing the film's storyline from a modern-day success story to a classic underdog story.

Harry Knowles from Ain't it Cool News was invited by McTiernan for a test screening of the film in Long Island sometime after the first test screening, and in his review of McTiernan's original cut, Knowles said that the movie was bad, but was at least an unapologetic hard-R film with much nudity and some brutal violence in Rollerball scenes, but even as a workprint it was obvious how poorly the action scenes were edited, and the story was bad.

Following the negative test screenings, MGM ordered massive re-shoots and re-edits to be done on the film in the middle of 2001. Shortly after the test screenings, MGM appointed a new head of marketing and distribution, Robert Levin, who convinced McTiernan to let go of the summer release date.

On orders from the studio, around 30 minutes were cut out of the original rough cut of the film and the entire ending was re-shot and changed. Some of the cuts were made because MGM thought the movie was "too Asian".

In the original ending, Petrovich gets killed by Sanjay and Jonathan and Aurora fly back to the US, during which Jonathan says that he will continue playing the Rollerball game in the US, and how he is now part owner of the game.

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