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Battle Royale Poster Drawn by Bryan Lee O'Malley, Kevin Tong

Kinji Fukasaku's live-action Battle Royale film joined the film lineup at Tugg, a service that lets crowds vote to decide which films will play in their area at participating theaters. Alamo Drafthouse is the first to screen the film in Houston, and its collectible art division Mondo collaborated with Scott Pilgrim's Bryan Lee O'Malley and Mondo regular Kevin Tong to create a poster. The poster depicts the violent deaths in the film in O'Malley's signature style, and Mondo is printing both English and Japanese logo variants of the poster.

The film will open at the Alamo Drafthouse in Houston, Texas on February 16. Tickets cost US$85 and will come with one of 225 limited variant posters (with Battle Royale's Japanese logo). Regular posters (with the English logo) will go on sale at a later date at Mondo's art gallery website, and promoters at future Battle Royale screenings will also receive a limited number of the regular variant.

Battle Royale depicts a Japanese dystopian society in which every year, a middle school class is chosen to engage in a battle to the death with each other. Viz Media publishes Takami's original novel in North America.

Kinji Fukasaku directed a well-known film adaptation in 2000, and his son Kenta Fukasaku completed the sequel Battle Royale II: Requiem after the elder Fukasaku passed away during production. Takami and Masayuki Taguchi's manga version spanned 15 volumes over the course of six years. Tokyopop released the entire manga starting in 2003 before shutting down its North American publishing operations.

An American television adaptation was initially planned by The CW network but was canned after the mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut. A similar situation ended producer Roy Lee and Neal H. Moritz's American film adaptation when the project went dormant after the Virginia Tech shootings.

Thanks to Littlegreenwolf for the tip.

[Via Superhero Hype]