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What changed on screen
What changed on screen, title by title: 13 in total. Tap a cover to open it. Titles you haven't marked as read stay locked so nothing gets spoiled.
- Referencenod to comics or other movies
- Cameoa familiar face shows up
- Setupplanted now, pays off later
- Behind the scenesproduction trivia
- ChangeFrom Asakawa to Rachel
In the book the investigator is Kazuyuki Asakawa, a Tokyo reporter, and the story moves across Japan: Yokohama, Hakone and Izu Oshima island. The film swaps all that for Rachel Keller, a Seattle journalist.
source ↗ - ChangeThe friend becomes an ex-husband
Asakawa's ally is Ryuji Takayama, a high-school friend and philosophy professor. In the film that role goes to Noah, Rachel's ex-husband and a video analyst. In both versions he asks for a copy of the tape to study.
source ↗ - ChangeA virus instead of a ghost
In the book the tape works like a virus: Sadako's powers fused with the smallpox virus, and all it wants is to be copied. The film leaves the curse supernatural, without that explanation.
source ↗ - ChangeWho Samara is
Sadako is the daughter of a famous psychic, Shizuko Yamamura. In the film Samara is adopted by the Morgans, horse breeders. The horses that throw themselves into the sea exist only in the American version.
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- ChangeWho investigates
Wikipedia lists Rings as based on Spiral. But the book follows Mitsuo Ando, a coroner, and the film follows Julia, a student, alongside Professor Gabriel and her boyfriend Holt.
source ↗ - ChangeThe hidden message
In Spiral, Ando decodes numbers on a newspaper stitched into his friend's body: the word RING. In Rings the message is a Braille mark burned into Julia's hand. Either way, a hidden code leads to the next step.
source ↗ - ChangeRebirth
Spiral turns on Sadako's return. Rings borrows the idea and spells it out in Braille: "rebirth". Instead of a pregnancy, as in the book, Samara is reborn inside Julia.
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- ReferenceThe only one with no film
Loop is the only book in the series that never served as the basis for a Ring film.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesFrom page to video game
The 2000 video game The Ring: Terror's Realm borrows the simulated reality that gives the book its name: the Loop.
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- ReferenceThree stories
The collection, published in Japan on February 5, 1999, gathers "Coffin in the Sky", "Lemon Heart" and "Happy Birthday". The stories sit at different points in the series.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesThe story that became a Japanese film
"Lemon Heart" was the basis for the Japanese film Ring 0: Birthday (2000), a prequel about Sadako's youth. The American films do not use this material.
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- ReferenceTwo Japanese films
S was the basis for the Japanese films Sadako 3D and Sadako 3D 2. No American film uses the book.
source ↗ - Behind the scenesFrench before English
The book came out in French, titled Sadako, in April 2014. The English edition only arrived in December 2017.
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