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."

Akira Toriyama was originally supportive of the announcement of this live action adaptation and had asked fans to treat the film as a different interpretation of his own work. Upon watching the film itself however, Toriyama was so dissatisfied with the adaptation that it led him to authorize a revival of the Dragonball anime series starting with the animated film “Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods” (2013). Toriyama also revealed that he wasn't allowed to give any creative input on the live action film and that all of his suggestions were rejected by the filmmakers.

While this is the third live-action adaptation of Akira Toriyama's "Dragon Ball" manga; it is also the the first officially licensed live action adaptation. As the first two live action films before this, were both unlicensed and unofficial. The first unofficial adaptation was “Dragon Ball: Son Goku Fights, Son Goku Wins” (1990) from South Korea, and the second unofficial adaptation was “Dragon Ball: The Magic Begins” (1991) from Taiwan.

Sometime after the film was released, the film’s screenwriter Ben Ramsey did received multiple death threats from Dragonball fans due to them being disappointed with the way the film turn out. Ramsey had publicly apologized for the film not being up to everyone’s expectations. He also admitted he wrote the film solely for a paycheck.

This movie was not screened for the film critics.

When the film was in its preproduction stages back in 2002, George Lucas was in consideration to direct this film.

In prepare for her role as Bulma, Emmy Rossum did watched the “Dragon Ball” (1986) anime series and read the "Dragon Ball" manga.

In preparation for his role as Son Goku, Justin Chatwin read all the volumes of the “Dragon Ball” manga and "The Journey to the West," which was the Chinese literary classic which inspired the Dragonball series. He practiced martial arts and acrobatics, and as a way to get into Goku's character, he would told jokes to fellow cast members between filming breaks to increase the rapport between them/their characters.

This movie was one of the films in which Fox Studios owned the rights to for years but was never green-lit. Eventually, due to the Writer's Strike of 2007-2008, it was finally pushed into production.

In one of the movie posters, Goku was seen wearing a sweatshirt with Japanese characters on them. These characters in question(actually the same one repeated over and over) are the Japanese character "kame," which means "turtle." This was the symbol that any student of Master Roshi (who is also known as the Turtle Hermit) would wear.

The filmmakers decided to keep the number of characters in the film to an absolute minimum for a tighter story and better characterization. In other words, anthropomorphic animals like Oolong and Puar were removed for realism, and fan-favourite characters like Tien and Krillin were removed for better focus on the core characters.