Rollerball (1975 film)
| Rollerball | |
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| Directed by | Norman Jewison |
| Produced by | Norman Jewison |
| Written by | William Harrison |
| Starring | |
| Music by | André Previn |
| Cinematography | Douglas Slocombe |
| Edited by | Antony Gibbs |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
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Release date
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Running time
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129 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom United States |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $30 million |
Rollerball is a 1975 British-American dystopian science fiction sports action film, produced and directed by Norman Jewison, and starring James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn, and Ralph Richardson. The screenplay by William Harrison adapted his own short story, "Roller Ball Murder", which had first appeared in the September 1973 issue of Esquire.
Although Rollerball had an American cast, a Canadian director, and was released by the American company United Artists, it was produced in London and Munich.
Rollerball received mostly positive reviews.
In the film the world of 2018 (referred to in the tagline as "the not too distant future") is a global corporate state, containing entities such as the Energy Corporation, a global energy monopoly based in Houston, which deals with nominally peer corporations controlling access to all transport, luxury, housing, communication, and food on a global basis. According to the tagline, in this world, "wars will no longer exist. But there will be... Rollerball".
The film's title is the name of a violent, globally popular sport around which the events of the film take place. It is similar to Roller Derby in that two teams clad in body armor skate on roller skates (some instead ride on motorcycles) around a banked, circular track. There, however, the similarity ends. The object of the game is for the team in possession of the ball to score points by throwing a softball-sized steel ball into the goal, which is a magnetic, cone-shaped area inset into the wall of the arena. The team without possession of the ball is defensive and acts to prevent scoring. The ball is put into play by being fired out of a cannon at the top of the track. Rollerball is a full-contact sport in which players have considerable leeway to attack opposing players in order to take or maintain possession of the ball and to score points. In addition, each team has three players who ride motorcycles to which teammates can latch on and be towed. The player in possession of the ball must hold it in plain view at all times.
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