Gears Of War is one of the biggest videogame franchises around, so naturally a movie adaptation has been in development for a while. Underworld and Total Recall director Len Wiseman was attached to direct a script by, among others, 30 Days Of Night and Collateral‘s Stuart Beattie…nearly 10 years ago.
Wiseman left the project in 2010, and the film had its budget slashed, underwent rewrites and gradually slipped into development hell. However, with the impending release of Gears Of War 4, it looks like some life has been breathed back into the project.
Variety reports that Rod Fergusson, the head of videogame studio The Coalition, has confirmed that a Gears Of War film is back in development, with producers Scott Stuber (Ted) and Dylan Clark (Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes) attached to the project which is being set up at Universal.
“As a way to support the franchise the next logical step was to make the movie,” Fergusson said. “We’d done comics and novels in the past but the opportunity to work with Universal to bring the movie to life was perfect.”
As can only be expected, Fergusson was cagey on plot details, and didn’t rule out a straight adaptation (Marcus Fenix! The Locust! Cole Train! DOM!) or a more original storyline.
“I think you have to let the movies be the movies. They’re two different mediums, and two different audiences in some cases, and I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers. If you have this great IP with a deep backstory and lots of lore that you can make interesting stories out of it’s great, but if you just go after the gaming audience then it isn’t going to be a successful movie.
“That’s one of the great things about working with Universal. We’re finding that line where we can say it has enough lore and canon that it feels genuine to the game while at the same time going beyond that and asking ‘OK what makes a great movie?'”
What do you think? Gears Of War is obviously a hugely cinematic game, but you can see why the studio had cold feet about the budget, it would cost a hell of a lot to recreate that on the big screen. Could be fun if they get it right, though…
Gears Of War 4 is released on 11 October. Keep up with the latest genre news with the new issue of SciFiNow.
