Battle Royale is a 2000 Japanese dystopian action film directed by Kinji Fukasaku from a screenplay by Kenta Fukasaku, based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Koushun Takami. The film stars Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Tarō Yamamoto, Chiaki Kuriyama, Kou Shibasaki, Masanobu Andō, and Beat Takeshi. It follows a group of junior high school students forced to fight to the death by a totalitarian Japanese government.