Ring 0 (2000)

Interesting facts

• Budget: $6M
• Based on: The Birthday

Ring 0: Birthday is a 2000 Japanese supernatural psychological thriller film directed by Norio Tsuruta, from a screenplay by Hiroshi Takahashi, based on the short story "Lemon Heart" from the Birthday anthology by Koji Suzuki. A prequel to Ring (1998), the story follows the life of the character of Sadako Yamamura just before she consigned to her fate seen in the later Ring series.

Production

In 1999, Koji Suzuki concluded the Ring series by including a fourth entry titled Birthday, which collected three short stories that filled in details of the story. Asmik Ace decided to hire Ring and Ring 2 screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi to adapt the short stories of Birthday, Takahashi decided to only adapt the story Lemonheart from Birthday due to the complex nature of the short story collection.

Once Ring 0 went into production, numerous changes were made to the film production staff. The director for the film was the first change, as Nakata was replaced by Norio Tsuruta. Tsuruta had previously worked on direct-to-video horror scripts such as Honto ni atta kowai hanashi (Scary True Stories) in 1991, and wrote and directed the sequel.

Yukie Nakama was cast in the role of Sadako. After Nakama's friends had seen Ring, they teased her about her resemblance to Sadako. Nakama was later contacted by her agent, who mentioned they were looking for actresses for the role of Sadako and tried out for the role. She received confirmation of her having been cast in the role two weeks later.

"finale" by Japanese rock group L'Arc-en-Ciel, was used as the film official theme song, and it was released as Double A-side single, three days before the film's release. The band performed "finale" for the first time on the "RESET>>LIVE *000" Concerts at the Tokyo Big Sight on December 31, 1999.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.