‘Rollerball’ Turns 50! 7 Things You Didn’t Know About James Caan’s Dystopian Sports Film
A half-century ago, moviegoers played spectator to Rollerball, a dystopian sci-fi movie set in the year 2018, a time when society is ruled by corporations that sponsors the titular sport to entertain the masses. James Caan starred as Rollerball’s greatest player, known only as Jonathan E.
Directed by Norman Jewison and written by William Harrison, the film hit theaters on June 25, 1975, and polarized critics at the time — but in the decades since, the film has acquired many imitators and admirers. Keanu Reeves said on The Late Show that Rollerball was his favorite action movie when he was a kid. “James Caan. ‘Jonathan! Jonathan!’he actor gushed. “Like, it was violence, game and philosophy, social commentary — fantastic.”
Now roll on down the page and see fascinating facts about Rollerball’s production and impact.
1 The director and screenwriter found inspiration in real-life sports fights
Harrison wrote the short story “Roller Ball Murder” after seeing students break out into a brawl at a basketball game at the University of Arkansas, where he founded and co-directed the creative writing program.
His story made it to the pages of Esquire in 1973 and caught the attention of Jewison, who had seen similar violence at football matches in England and hockey games in the United States. In a 1999 interview with The Guardian, Jewison recalled witnessing a nasty fight between Boston and Philadelphia hockey players. “There was blood on the ice, and 16,000 people were standing up screaming,” he said, per The Telegraph.
2 Jewison and his staff created Rollerball’s gameplay
A 1974 Variety article mentioned, per AFI, that Jewison and his staff developed Harrison’s rough Rollerball idea into an actual game that combined roller derby, hockey, football, motorcycle racing, and judo, with teams of 10 players: three bikers, five skaters and two fielders.
3 The film has Olympic pedigree
Everett Collection
Munich’s BMW Park, an indoor arena that served as the basketball arena for the 1972 Summer Olympics, provided the filming location for Rollerball’s game sequences. Herbert Schürmann, who designed those cycling tracks for the 1972 Games, crafted the Rollerball track for the film, according to RB1975.com.
The arena was called Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle at the time, and it was renamed BMW Park in 2023. And in another connection to that German automaker, Rollerball found its Energy Corporation headquarters at the newly-constructed BMW Headquarters, per Movie-Locations.com.
4 The cast attended Rollerball boot camp
Everett Collection
Caan and the film’s supporting cast of attended a Rollerball boot camp for four months, and the lead actor spent seven days a week learning to skate, per The Telegraph. But the cast didn’t bank — pardon the pun — on the Munich arena having curved sides reaching 13 feet above the floor. “We’d just fall downhill,” Caan said.
5 Cast and crew members played the game between takes
Everett Collection
Cast members, extras, and stunt performers enjoyed Rollerball so much, they even played it when the cameras weren’t rolling, according to TCM.
And while reports of on-set deaths are just tall tales, multiple people were injured during Rollerball’s production. One person needed six months to recover from a training accident, a stunt performer was hospitalized during the shoot, and Caan suffered shoulder and rib injuries, according to The Telegraph.
Stunt performer Roy Scammell said, “Naturally, I don’t want to die, but take that out of it and it’s a terrific game. I’m sure it could catch on.”
6 The fictional sport’s popularity outraged director Jewison
Everett Collection
Promoters tried to get Jewison to release the rights to the fictional sport so they could form real-life Rollerball leagues, per The Telegraph. He was horrified.
“I thought that violence for the entertainment of the masses was an obscene idea,” he said later. “That’s what I saw coming and that’s why I made the film. In Europe, they bought into that idea. In America, they just wanted to play the game, man.”
7 A box-office-bomb remake led to its director’s prison sentence
MGM/courtesy Everett Collection
Many moviegoers thought the 2002 remake of Rollerball — starring Chris Klein, LL Cool J, and Rebecca Romijn — was criminally bad. But director John McTiernan was, in fact, sent to prison in a case related to that film. After lying to an FBI investigator about hiring a private investigator to wiretap Charles Roven, a producer of the remake, McTiernan pleaded guilty to a charge of giving a false statement, and he was sentenced to four months behind bars, according to The New York Times.
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