Dragonball: Evolution (live-action movie)

James Kyson Lee auditioned for the role for Yamcha.

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.

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

Ozaru was never Piccolo's disciple, but the true form of all Sayans, as they always "show their best form to the moon", not during a solar eclipse.

Gohan, Goku's grandfather, was not killed by Piccolo, but by Goku himself when he turned into Ozaru one night.

In the original story, when Goku first meets Bulma, Goku was just 10 years old, a stupid little fellow, and had no idea whatsoever about girls, since he used to live in the mountains with only his grandfather his whole life.

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.

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 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.

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.

Director James Wong personally asked Japanese pop musician Ayumi Hamasaki if she could compose and sing the film's theme song. Since Dragon Ball was created in Japan, he felt that the song should be by a Japanese singer and in Japanese. Wong was so impressed with Hamasaki's song "Rule" that he ensured that the song would appear for all international releases of the film.

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."