Rollerball (1975 film)

Rollerball is a 1975 BritishAmerican dystopian science fiction sports action film, produced and directed by Norman Jewison, and starring James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck, Moses Gunn, and Ralph Richardson. The screenplay by William Harrison adapted his own short story, Roller Ball Murder, which had first appeared in the September 1973 issue of Esquire.

In the film the world of 2018 referred to in the tagline as the not too distant future is a global corporate state, containing entities such as the Energy Corporation, a global energy monopoly based in Houston, which deals with nominallypeer corporations controlling access to all transport, luxury, housing, communication, and food on a global basis. According to the tagline, in this world, wars will no longer exist. But there will be... Rollerball.The films title is the name of a violent, globally popular sport around which the events of the film take place. It is similar to Roller Derby in that two teams clad in body armor skate on roller skates some instead ride on motorcycles around a banked, circular track. There, however, the similarity ends. The object of the game is to score points by the offensive team the team in possession of the ball throwing a softballsized steel ball into the goal, which is a magnetic, coneshaped area inset into the wall of the arena. The team without possession of the ball is defensive and acts to prevent scoring. It is a fullcontact sport in which players have considerable leeway to attack opposing players in order to take or maintain possession of the ball and to score points. In addition, each team has three players who ride motorcycles to which teammates can latch on and be towed. The player in possession of the ball must hold it in plain view at all times. ........

Source: Wikipedia