50 Fun Facts About The Ring

Who directed the 2002 American film The Ring?

He deliberately avoided casting big stars because he wanted the film to be 'discovered'.

Who plays journalist Rachel Keller in The Ring?

She won Best Actress at the Saturn Awards for the role.

How long do viewers of the cursed tape have to live?

The phone rings straight after the tape ends, and a voice whispers the deadline.

What is the name of the girl in the well whose rage created the tape?

She was adopted after Anna Morgan suffered four consecutive miscarriages.

Which young actress plays Samara in the 2002 film?

She was also the voice of Lilo in Lilo & Stitch the same year.

Who plays Rachel's ex, video analyst Noah Clay?

Noah is the one who finds Samara's psychiatric file at Eola Psychiatric Hospital.

Which veteran Scottish actor plays Samara's adoptive father Richard Morgan?

Richard insists Samara is evil and electrocutes himself in the bathtub.

Which actress plays Katie Embry, the teenager who dies in the opening scene?

Katie's mother Ruth asks her sister Rachel to investigate the death.

The Ring is a remake of a 1998 film from which country?

Its success set off a wave of American remakes of Asian horror, including The Grudge and Dark Water.

Who wrote the 1991 novel on which the whole franchise is based?

An English translation was not published until 2003, a year after the American film.

Which US city is the American film set in, chosen for its 'wet and isolated' atmosphere?

Much of it was actually shot in Oregon, including the Columbia River Gorge.

What is the name of the inn where Katie and her friends first watched the tape?

The well is hidden beneath the floorboards of one of its cabins.

What was Anna Morgan's occupation?

Her horses drowned themselves off Moesko Island, and one on Rachel's ferry leaps overboard.

Which real Oregon landmark doubled as the Moesko Island beacon?

It stands near Newport on the Oregon Coast.

How long did Samara survive in the well after being pushed in?

The ring of light seen from the bottom of the well is one of the two meanings of the title.

Which studio released The Ring in October 2002?

After it became a sleeper hit the studio expanded the release to 700 more theatres.

Roughly how much did The Ring take at the worldwide box office?

About $129 million of that came from the United States after a $15 million opening weekend.

Which screenwriter wrote three drafts of The Ring before an uncredited rewrite by Scott Frank?

He returned to write The Ring Two, and the film famously went into production without a finished script.

Who composed the score for The Ring?

He went on to score Verbinski's Pirates of the Caribbean films and Rango.

Which Oscar-winning actor's bookend scenes as a murderer were cut entirely from The Ring?

He had just won his Academy Award for Adaptation the same year.

How was the cursed video itself used in the marketing campaign in summer 2002?

Promotional websites for the film's fictional characters and places were also created.

Which two prizes did The Ring win at the 29th Saturn Awards?

Rotten Tomatoes lists it at 72 percent, while Metacritic's 57 counts as mixed.

What sent Verbinski toward the project in the first place?

He described the tape as 'intriguing', 'pulp' and 'avant-garde'.

Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli gave The Ring what distinctive look?

The palette became a signature of the J-horror remake wave that followed.

Who directed the original 1998 Japanese film Ring?

He later crossed the Pacific to direct The Ring Two in place of Verbinski.

What is the name of the vengeful spirit in the Japanese original?

Her mother Shizuko had psychic abilities that were publicly demonstrated and mocked.

In adapting the novel, the Japanese filmmakers changed the protagonist in what major way?

Kazuyuki Asakawa became Reiko Asakawa, and his daughter became her son Yoichi.

Who plays reporter Reiko Asakawa in the 1998 film?

Hiroyuki Sanada plays her psychic ex-husband Ryūji.

Ring (1998) was released in Japan on the same day as which sequel, shot back-to-back with it?

That sequel flopped and was largely ignored, so Nakata made Ring 2 the following year and disregarded it.

What record did Ring set on its release in Japan?

It also became Hong Kong's highest-grossing Japanese-language film in 1999.

Before the 1998 movie there had already been a 1995 adaptation of the novel. In what form?

Nakata and Takahashi watched the Fuji Television version while working on their script.

Which director was attached to The Ring Two before leaving over creative differences?

Hideo Nakata, who made the Japanese original, ended up directing in place of Verbinski.

Rachel and Aidan move to which Oregon town in The Ring Two?

She takes a job at The Daily Astorian; the film was shot there and in Los Angeles.

What animals attack Rachel and Aidan in a memorable Ring Two sequence?

A scene of Aidan first meeting a deer at a fair was cut from the theatrical version.

Which Oscar-winning actress plays Samara's birth mother Evelyn in The Ring Two?

Mary Elizabeth Winstead plays the young Evelyn in flashback.

How much did The Ring Two take at the box office against its $50m budget?

Reviews were mixed; critics blamed a screenplay 'full of absurdities'.

What was released in 2005 to bridge The Ring and The Ring Two?

The Ring Two picks up six months after both the first film and the short.

Who directed the 2017 third instalment, Rings?

Paramount had first announced it as The Ring 3D in 2014.

Which Big Bang Theory actor appears in Rings (2017) as Gabriel Brown?

Vincent D'Onofrio plays a blind man whose finale involves a swarm of cicadas.

Who plays Samara in Rings (2017)?

Matilda Lutz leads the film as Julia, the young woman racing the seven-day curse.

In Suzuki's novel, on which island was Sadako born?

The investigators piece together her timeline going back thirty years.

What was the resort in the novel, beneath which the well lies, before it became a lodge?

The doctor who threw Sadako into the well had worked there.

Which 1998 novel is the third in Suzuki's Ring series?

Birthday followed in 1999, and the series stretched to S (2012) and Tide (2013).

Which of these actresses was offered the lead in The Ring before Naomi Watts?

Jennifer Connelly and Kate Beckinsale were also offered the part; Verbinski wanted the film to be 'discovered' rather than star-driven.

How did cinematographer Bojan Bazelli achieve the film's grey blue-green colour correction?

He used an 81EF and one of two green filters, committing to the look early; colourist Dale E. Grahn timed it photochemically rather than with a digital intermediate.

Which medieval chant theme is used repeatedly in Hans Zimmer's score for The Ring?

The soundtrack was not released until 2005, combined with music from The Ring Two on a single album.

Where were physical VHS copies of the cursed tape left as part of the guerrilla marketing campaign?

The tape's footage also ran in late-night TV programming over summer 2002 with no mention of the film.

How much did The Ring gross on its opening weekend in the United States?

It became a sleeper hit, prompting DreamWorks to add 700 theaters, and finished with $129.1 million domestically.

What grade did CinemaScore audiences give The Ring?

Critics were kinder, with a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score, though Roger Ebert gave it a thumbs down as 'borderline ridiculous'.

Where did The Ring place on Bravo's list of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments?

Bloody Disgusting ranked it sixth among the decade's horror films and called it still the best American J-horror remake.