Directed by: James Wong
Written by: James Wong
Cast: Chow Yun-Fat, Justin Chatwin, James Marsters, Jamie Chung, Emmy Rossum, Eriko Tamura, Joon Park
Studio: Fox
Genre: Action
Official Site: N/A
Release Date: April 8, 2009 (wide)

The Story

Goku and a handful of friends battle for the Earth against the deadly forces of the Saiyans, who are sweeping across the universe, leaving a path of destruction.

Goku and his friends‘ best chance for survival rests with the Namekian DragonBalls, which provide them the power to summon a mighty dragon.

The story begins with Goku, who seeks out upon his adoptive grandfather Grandpa Gohan’s dying request to find the great Master Roshi and gather all seven Dragon Balls.

Of which he has one, in order to prevent the evil Lord Piccolo from succeeding in his desire to use the Dragon Balls to take over the world.

And Goku’s quest is to obtain the mystical DragonBalls before Piccolo does.

Movie Trivia

According to James Marsters, his role of Piccolo is a complex, Shakespearean one,”Thousands of years ago he used to be a force of good, but he was imprisoned for 2000 years, making him very angry, and then he finds a way to escape. The cool thing is anybody who’s seen Dragon Ball knows that Lord Piccolo transforms into the Piccolo, and that is a whole other ball of wax, heroic wouldn’t be the wrong term, but it’s a long journey.”

To attain the quintessence of Dragon Ball, many of the actors were given unique hairstyles to resemble their anime counterparts (Emmy Rossum in particular was given two separate wigs for her role as Bulma, a traditional blue one as well as a never before seen pink one). Justin Chatwin, though, has no such hairdo since James Wong felt his hair resembled Goku’s spiky hairstyle close enough without actually being silly.

James Kyson Lee auditioned for the role for Yamcha.

Ron Perlman was offered the role of Piccolo, but turned it down to work on Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008) instead.

Producer Stephen Chow is a big fan of Dragon Ball, and signed on to the film immediately. He was deeply interested in being the director, but decided to just serve as producer because he believes in directing only his own original stories.

Taking a leaf out of Superman (1978) and Transformers (2007), the designs in this film will be focused on verisimilitude and realism as much as possible, but will also portray alien and futuristic influences where necessary. Thus, the ultramodern cities will be featured in the film, but the talking animals populating the cartoon (for instance Oolong, Puar and Korin) have been left out.

The cities in the film have been designed to be futuristic, as seen in the cartoon, but there will also be Oriental and Aztec influences in the designs. This is due to the film being set in Asia but being shot in America and Mexico.

Stephen Chow and ‘James Wong’ (qvv) felt the Dragon Balls in the series resembled “oversized magic fruit,” so in the film they have been redesigned to become golden-translucent orbs, studded with rubies and shimmering with an “aurora borealis”-light, for a more extraterrestrial look.

During the early days of filming pictures were released to a Mexican newspaper called “Record”. In that paper a full run down of what Dragonball was to be about as well as information on its director James Wong (IV) were given. However the pictures labeled as “the Director” and “actors” were nothing more than simple extras, in fact the picture of the supposed director was that of a chubby, white, blond haired extra, a huge contrast to James Wong who is of course a slim, Asian man.

Stephen Chow and James Marsters are big fans of “Dragon Ball: Doragon bôru” (1986).

Stephen Chow was deeply interested in directing the film, but decided to serve only as producer as he believes in directing only original stories of his own creation.

According to the film’s make-up expert Ed French, it took four hours to apply the prosthetics to James Marsters to change him into Piccolo. At first it took 17 hours, but Marsters had difficulty breathing and Piccolo’s look also seemed overdone, so some prosthetics were removed, thus shortening the time to 4 hours.

The film was mostly shot in an abandoned jeans factory in Durango, Mexico with blue and green screens.

Director James Wong personally asked J-pop singer/songwriter Ayumi Hamasaki if she could write and sing the film’s theme song. Since Dragonball was created in Japan, he felt that the song should be by a Japanese singer and in Japanese, for every country the film is released in.

James Marsters discussed the look of Piccolo during the Grand Slam 2008 convention. He said the producers wanted to make Piccolo “more beautiful” than James wanted him to be. Since the producers weren’t around when filming started, James and the make up artist changed the character’s look to make him ugly, which would reflect Piccolo’s rage from being imprisoned for so long. James said, “It would be better to be fired than mess up Piccolo.”

Tom Welling was considered for the role of Goku.

Worldwide Release Dates

13 March 2009 In Japan, Singapore, South Korea
8 April 2009 In Belgium, Egypt, France, Norway, Spain, USA,
9 April 2009 In Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Mexico, Netherlands, Portugal, Russia
10 April 2009 In Finland, Italy, Sweden, UK
17 April 2009 In Poland
23 April 2009 In Turkey