Movie Chronicles » Gears of War Movie

Extensive Stuart Beattie interview October 8th, 2007

Game­Pro were given the oppor­tu­nity to talk with Gears of War movie writer Stu­art Beat­tie, in an exclu­sive inter­view. Here are some choice extracts from the infor­ma­tive article:

“The per­cep­tion of videogames in Hol­ly­wood is chang­ing slowly. Hol­ly­wood likes to do what’s proven. They’ve already proved that books work, and plays can work, and recently that comic books can work. But they’ve yet to have a film be as suc­cess­ful as say Spider-Man, that’s based on a videogame. 

[…] While there are more and more videogame movies being made because there are more and more videogames being made, there still hasn’t been that one that has hit it out of the park yet. At the moment, I would say the per­cep­tion of videogame movies in Hol­ly­wood is: they are inter­ested, they’re intrigued, but they’re still not com­pletely sure if it can actu­ally work.”

As for the use of a 300-esque green screen approach,

“[…] That film was shot com­pletely on green screen, which is amaz­ing when you actu­ally see the film. It’s prob­a­bly how we’re going to do Gears of War.”

[Refer­ring to GOW] It’s a planet and it’s a bub­ble and it’s a build­ing. It’s an epic sci-fi war and an enor­mous film. To get it made at all, the only way to make it for a price is to be on a sound­stage. But the game also has that look, which is really inter­est­ing, so I think it will dove­tail really nicely.

Beat­tie also hopes that the film will be “extremely col­lab­o­ra­tive”.

As to our pre­vi­ous story, wherein we reported that the movie could be on hold, we received this very encour­ag­ing E-mail,

GEARS OF WAR is not stalled in any way, shape, or form. We are sim­ply in the process of find­ing the right direc­tor. This is always a del­i­cate and dif­fi­cult task, and with mul­ti­ple loom­ing strikes, even more so. Be patient, stay tuned, news will come.