Rollerball (1975) on Netflix
In a corporate-run future, Jonathan E. is captain of Houston's Rollerball team. The Energy Corporation offers him a retirement package, and the ruling powers see his popularity as a threat.
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- Netflix3.3/5
- IMDb6.5/1032,801 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes67%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 2018, corporations govern society, and Rollerball is the brutal sport they stage. Jonathan E. is the veteran captain and star of Houston's team. Mr. Bartholomew, chairman of the Energy Corporation, offers him a rich retirement package if he announces his retirement on a television special about his career. Jonathan declines. He asks to see his former wife Ella, whom a corporate executive took from him some years before.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Rollerball (1975)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Rollerball was the first major Hollywood production to give screen credit to its stunt performers, in recognition of their work on the film's many crucial action sequences.
- Audiences loved the sport so much that promoters repeatedly asked Norman Jewison to sell the "rights to the game" so real Rollerball leagues could be formed; Jewison was outraged, since the film's whole point was the sickness of contact sports.
- The sport, only vaguely described in William Harrison's short story, was created by Norman Jewison and production designer John Box, who conceived it as a blend of a roulette wheel and a pinball machine drawing on roller derby, hockey, football, motocross and judo.
- The arena sequences were shot at the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle in Munich, picked because it was the only sports arena in the world with a near-circular profile, which the production could take over and re-dress.
- English pro wrestler Mark Rocco worked as one of the film's stuntmen and later took "Rollerball" as his ring name.
