2005 Winter - Intro - Hideo Nakata - Roy Lee - Koji Suzuki - Horror on the Horizon
Interview with Roy Lee, matchmaker of the macabre
text by Sumiyo Heianna / portrait by Tadayuki Naito
 Over the years, Hollywood has produced countless remakes of European films, and behind their success have been people with vision and ability who supported the movement and established it as a viable business in the movie industry. At the helm of Hollywood's phenomenal remake boom of Japanese horror films is Roy Lee, a 35-year-old Korean-American, who serves as an intermediary between Japanese filmmakers and Hollywood, purchasing the remake rights of Japanese horror films and selling them to American studios. He has bought the rights for such movies as Ringu, Dark Water, Turn, Kansen (Infection), and Yogen (Prophecy).
"Leading a stable life was boring," Lee says. "I wanted a more exciting one." Throwing away a career as a lawyer, he went to Los Angeles with just his car, searching for a role only he could play in the film industry. He happened to watch a videotape of the Japanese horror film Ringu that a friend had lent him and was spine-chillingly shocked. "It was truly sensational. I was convinced the film could be a great hit in the U.S. and that I could make it one."
To make the story easier for American audiences to understand, he came up with some clever strategies. Several different scenarios with different settings were tested in the effort to help Americans relate to the story without knowledge of Japanese customs and culture. Furthermore, the plot was simplified to make the story more logical. Strong in his convictions about its potential, he negotiated a deal with Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio.
Lee says, "Unlike American blood-and-gore horror movies, which are full of shocking images, J-horror films are characterized by stories that gradually raise the level of psychological fear as they unfold. Ringu impressed me the same way as when I first watched my all-time favorite horror film The Exorcist. Though classical in nature, I was convinced that it would seem very fresh to American audiences." He was right, and with his belief and business strategy behind it, Ringu was remade, released in the U.S. as The Ring, and turned out to be a greater success than anyone expected, grossing nearly $130 million to date.
Lee believes the time was right: "Some people say that the J-horror remake boom is the result of a shortage of effective ideas in Hollywood, but I don't think so. The quality of Japanese movies has reached a level that is now competitive with the rest of the world. Also, mediators like me who can introduce Japanese films to Hollywood studios have appeared. These and a number of other factors all came together at just the right time, and Hollywood, which is always looking for interesting films, opened its doors wide."
Roy Lee accurately grasps the potential of films from all over Asia, including Japan, Korea, and Thailand, and then proposes and negotiates remake projects with the leading studios. All of the films he has handled have become great hits, and he has become the leading remake producer in the film industry.
Asked about his latest, The Grudge, he says, "When I showed the original Japanese version to Sam Raimi, the director of Spider-Man, he said that he had never seen such a terrifying film before, and decided to acquire the rights to produce an American remake. Since Raimi wanted to keep the film as faithful to the original as possible, he brought in its Japanese director, Takashi Shimizu, to direct the American version as well. Unlike The Ring, this is the first Hollywood remake that a Japanese director has worked on. In this sense, I think it's a very important film because of its joint production process in filmmaking between Japan and the U.S."
While J-horror remakes have become increasingly popular, Chinese action films have been enjoying top box office success without being remade. "What impresses the audience most of all," Lee says, "is the quality of a story. The film industry is now transcending national borders. The role of Japanese films and how they will be evaluated in Hollywood will depend on how much their original content can directly appeal to the American people."
Articles from the 2005 WINTER issue:
Kateigaho International Edition Issues:
2005 SUMMER - 2005 SPRING - 2005 WINTER
2004 AUTUMN - 2004 SUMMER - 2004 SPRING - 2004 WINTER
2003 AUTUMN - INAUGURAL ISSUE
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