Quentin Tarantino has revealed that he wished he directed the Japanese action film Battle Royale.

The 2000 thriller film, directed by Kinji Fukasaku and based on the novel by Koshun Takami, follows a group of junior high school students who are forced to fight to the death by the government on a remote island.

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Speaking on Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Tuesday (July 19) about the film he wished he could have directed, Tarantino said: “I’m a big fan of the Japanese movie Battle Royale, which is what Hunger Games was based on.

“Well, Hunger Games just ripped it off. That would have been awesome to have directed Battle Royale.”

The Hunger Games, based on the novels by Suzanne Collins, followed protagonist Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) who takes part in a compulsory televised death match between 12 impoverished districts overseen by the wealthy Capitol.

A prequel film is currently in development based on the novel The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes, set to be released on November 17, 2023.

Tarantino has long promised his next tenth film will be his last, following his ninth feature in 2019’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.

Speaking last year about the reasoning for his retirement, Tarantino said: “I know film history and from here on in, filmmakers do not get better.

“Don Siegel – if he had quit his career in 1979, when he did Escape From Alcatraz, what a final film! What a mic drop. But he dribbles away with more other ones, he doesn’t mean it.”

The director is set to release a new film history book titled Cinema Speculation, which is “organised around key American films from the 1970s, all of which Quentin Tarantino first saw as a young moviegoer at the time”. The book is released October 25, 2022.