Trivia / Ran

• Creator's Favorite Episode: When Akira Kurosawa was asked what his favorite of his films was, he'd always reply, simply, "The next one." That was until he made this, which became the answer to that question for the rest of his life.
• Development Hell: You'd think that Japan's greatest director would get full backing for Ran. But, nope, Akira Kurosawa was considered "too Western", and in the end, needed American producers who revered him to get Ran funded years later.
• International Coproduction: This was a Japanese-French venture produced by Herald Ace, Nippon Herald Films and Greenwich Film Productions.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The film was set to receive a Criterion Blu-ray release in 2010 with new features in addition to the features on the DVD. However, its license holder requested that the Blu-ray release be nullified and the DVD set be discontinued. They then released a Blu-ray with only a few of the DVD's special features. Fan response to the quality of the Blu-ray transfer varies, with some claiming it is inferior to the DVD release. The new home video rights holder also didn't bother to release a new DVD, making it one of only a few films that only has a Blu-ray release currently in print. Thankfully, rights holders asking Criterion to pull their set off the market is rare, but its happened at least a dozen times in the past decade.
• Playing Against Type: Comedian Hitoshi Ueki acting a serious (if ultimately minor) role in a pitch-black historical drama. Westerners will glide over it since this is likely the only thing they know him in, but in Japan this would've been the rough equivalent of Groucho Marx popping up in The Godfather.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The role of Lord Hidetora was supposedly written with Toshiro Mifune in mind, but this didn't happen because at the time of production Kurosawa and Mifune were on bad terms. It has been a source of debate among sources and critics, but Tatsuya Nakadai's performance has been criticized in the past as merely reproducing Toshiro Mifune's acting in other previous Kurosawa's films; Nakadai himself even said in an interview that he was playing Mifune playing Hidetora. (It doesn't help that Hidetora's image eerily recalls an elderly Washizu from Throne of Blood.) Other critics, however, dismiss this and say Nakadai's interpretation of the role was far more dynamic (and all the more heart-wrenching) than if Mifune had the part.
  • Kurosawa originally had wanted the London Symphony Orchestra to perform the score, but upon meeting conductor Hiroyuki Iwaki of the Sapporo Symphony Orchestra, he engaged Iwaki and the orchestra to record it.

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