The CW may develop "Battle Royale" as a television series, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Poised for a possible feature film remake for years now, "Battle Royale" was a 2000 Japanese thriller directed by Kinji Fukasaku and adapted from a 1999 novel by Koushun Takami.

Talks on the project are reportedly preliminary and are believed to largely hinge on the approval of Takami.

"Battle Royale" was notorious for its ruthless depiction of school children forced to fight each other to death in an event designed to terrorize the public into submission. The tale was set an alternate timeline featuring Japan as a member of a totalitarian state known as the Republic of Greater East Asia

Neal Moritz ("Fast and the Furious") and Roy Lee (“Lego”) were spearheading a film adaption for New Line Cinema, but the project stalled in 2008 during the consolidation of studio operations.

Although the recent success of "The Hunger Games" proved the popularity of such apocalyptic tales, the similarity of the concept also helped derail the "Battle Royale" remake. But television offers a potentially effective way of delivering similar concepts to an audience, much like "The Vampire Dairies" excelled in the wake of "Twilight."

However, "Battle Royale" faces another stiff obstacle on The CW besides Takami's approval -- the development of the apocalyptic show "The Selection," a tale of young adults battling for survival in a dystopian future. Because the shows carry similar themes, the network may ultimately explore the merits of the properties and choose one over the other.

Fukasaku's "Battle Royale" became one of the highest grossing films in Japan and was nominated for nine awards at the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, including Picture of the Year. It won for Outstanding Achievement in Film Editing, Popularity Award and Newcomer of the Year (Tatsuya Fujiwara and Aki Maeda).