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Gears of War being scaled back, delayed. Len Wiseman unlikely to direct. July 30th, 2010

The Gears of War movie adap­ta­tion has been pretty quiet of recent. In April this year rumors that pro­duc­tion on a Gears of War movie had slowed down kicked up again–this time from New Line stu­dio sources (as reported by LATimes). Reports sug­gested the sto­ry­line and bud­get were being dra­mat­i­cally scaled back and that Len Wise­man would be focussing on other projects, namely Noc­ture. The orig­i­nal bud­get was expected to be around $100m, it is now thought to be con­sid­er­ably less.

The script by Chris Mor­gan (“Wanted”) had a lot of buzz around it, and was tweaked late last year by Billy Ray, which included a lot of char­ac­ter work. Reports were good, a sprawl­ing and epic action movie. The change to the bud­get how­ever makes the film much less epic, and much more a sim­ple inva­sion story. With this in mind, New Line are search­ing for writ­ers to make these changes. Until this is ready, pro­duc­tion is stalled.

Wise­man has now been attached to the Total Recall remake, and will almost cer­tainly not be direct­ing the Gears movie. Add to this that Kate Beck­in­sale is his wife, and we’ve lost our only cast member.

What now for the Gears of War movie? A 2012 release? A low bud­get action film?

Gears of War movie rears its head at Comic-con; Kate Beckinsale, new story, no wrestlers August 10th, 2009

Just as I cast my doubts on the pro­duc­tion of the Gears of War movie, it rears its head at this year’s SDCC with a panel fea­tur­ing Len Wise­man (direc­tor) and Chris Mor­gan (writer, Wanted). Pro­duc­tion is still in the ear­li­est stages, but more importantly—it is still in pro­duc­tion. How early? No con­cept art, cast­ing or pro­duc­tion stills yet. Wise­man and Mor­gan did how­ever offer up their thoughts on the adaptation.

Cast­ing

The first ques­tions con­cerned cast­ing, in par­tic­u­lar the (entirely unsub­stan­ti­ated) rumors that wrestlers would be cast as main char­ac­ters. Wise­man said that cast­ing strong men wouldn’t be his choice, instead, “I’m look­ing for an actor for the role and then [I’ll] put him into shape”, adding “I’m always think­ing who could play the best Mar­cus. You want to get hooked into the char­ac­ter [first] and then all the amaz­ing spectacle.”

As for the cast­ing of Maria, Len Wise­man wants his wife Kate Beck­in­sale to play the badass female role, “If I can con­vince [Kate Beck­in­sale] — and I think I have a shot — I’d love to see that.”

Plot

Emer­gence day will play a big role in the movie’s plot, but the films are unlikely to closely fol­low the games. Whilst promis­ing to fol­low the Gears his­tory closely, he made no guar­an­tees about “appeas­ing gamers”. Rod Fer­gu­son, the game’s exec­u­tive pro­ducer, explained:

“You can be too tied to what is the game. We’re so ori­ented at grab­bing the gam­ing audi­ence, we don’t leave behind what shouldn’t be in the movie. We’re about mak­ing the best movie pos­si­ble, not about mak­ing Gears of War the game into a movie… pre­vi­ous movies haven’t been will­ing to let go. We had only three pages [of notes for Wise­man]. ‘Please don’t kill Marcus.’

To sum­ma­rize, the stu­dios have been asked to:

“make the best movie pos­si­ble that fits your medium.”

Changes may include female COGs.

Wise­man and Mor­gan add:

“The tone of the char­ac­ters and how they inter­act with each other [lends to] the over­all expe­ri­ence of the movie. Look at Aliens in terms of the dark envi­ron­ment, but then how much fun you have with the characters.”

“Even though the world is lit­er­ally at an end, they still joke. They have real emo­tion and compassion.”

Before Wise­man concludes,

“There’s so much opin­ion out there about what this movie should be and shouldn’t be, it falls on a very small group of peo­ple… and I’m one of those peo­ple. Are you going to respect the game? Of course I am. It is a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence from watch­ing a movie, but it’s my job of trans­lat­ing it into the best cin­e­matic story [possible].”

Thanks Bill!

Gears of War movie update and fan art July 16th, 2009

News has been slow, and that’s an under­state­ment — it’s been almost a year. I apol­o­gize that the con­tent of the blog hasn’t been updated more often, but the truth of it is, there hasn’t been any news. The Gears of War movie has slipped into pro­duc­tion hell; we can only spec­u­late as to why — inter­est, finance and sched­ul­ing are some of the biggest contenders.

The video game adap­ta­tion as such is still in very early stages, despite hav­ing announced that Len Wise­man would direct; news that may no longer hold true given the length of time since the last update. We cer­tainly won’t be meet­ing the rumored 2010 Sum­mer release date, if pro­duc­tion ramped up this com­ing Jan­u­ary the best we could hope for is Spring 2011.

Some fan art

To lighten the mood a lit­tle I give you some fan art pro­duced by Brian Speer, depict­ing Batista as Mar­cus and also fea­tur­ing The Rock, inevitably, com­ments on this post will now turn into a cast­ing discussion.

Legendary Pictures joins Gears of War July 25th, 2008

Vari­ety are report­ing that movie stu­dio Leg­endary Pic­tures will be co-financing and co-producing the Gears of War movie adap­ta­tion, to be directed by Len Wiseman.

It’s the first New Line project that Leg­endary has signed onto since the mini-major was folded into Warner Bros. ear­lier this year. Leg­endary has a deal to co-finance and co-produce at WB.

“Gears of War” has been set up at New Line since early last year with Marty Bowen and Wyck God­frey pro­duc­ing through their Tem­ple Hill ban­ner. “Gears” lead designer Cliff Bleszin­ski is exec pro­duc­ing and con­sult­ing for devel­oper Epic, which owns the rights.

Len Wise­man is direct­ing with Chris Mor­gan writ­ing the script. First draft was penned by Stu­art Beattie.

Len Wiseman to Direct June 16th, 2008

Vari­ety are report­ing that Len Wise­man (Under­world) shall be tak­ing the helm on the Gears of War movie. We reported this rumor in August last year. Chris Mor­gan (Fast and the Furi­ous: Tokyo Drift) is also writ­ing a new draft based on Stu­art Beattie’s treatment:

Len Wise­man is suit­ing up to direct New Line’s “Gears of War,” based on Microsoft and Epic Games’ hit vidgame.

Chris Mor­gan is pen­ning a new draft of the actioner that Stu­art Beat­tie orig­i­nally tack­led. Scribe’s cred­its include Universal’s upcom­ing “Wanted” and “The Fast and the Furi­ous: Tokyo Drift.”

Fan­boys have been spec­u­lat­ing for nearly a year that Wise­man may helm the project; the game was fea­tured in his most recent pic, “Live Free or Die Hard.” But talks with New Line took place only over the last sev­eral months.

Wise­man will develop the story with Morgan.

I think the gen­eral con­sen­sus, from when Wise­man was pre­vi­ously rumored, was that he is a bad choice of direc­tor. Bring­ing in Chris Mor­gan, some­one that has worked on Fast and the Furi­ous 3 and lit­tle that is crit­i­cally acclaimed, sug­gests that the cre­ative minds behind this are want­ing to cre­ate an action-filled no brainer, with the major­ity of thought going into cool-looking CG action sequences rather than sto­ry­line and plot arcs. This news could poten­tially spell out doom (no pun intended) for the movie, con­demn­ing it to the world of low brow over the top action flicks. Gears surely deserves better.

Director Soon, Summer 2010 Release March 31st, 2008

At last, we have some big juicy news to get our hun­gry chain­saws plunged into. Wyck God­frey, (pro­ducer of Eragon, AVP, I Robot), has spo­ken out about the Gears adap­ta­tion for the big screen:

“We’ve got our script on and a direc­tor we’re about to attach. We’ll hope­fully make [the Gears of War movie] early next year for the sum­mer of 2010.”

Thanks Elias, Com­ing Soon

Gears Movie still on course November 13th, 2007

CliffyB has been talk­ing to the media about the sta­tus of the Gears of War movie again, which is some­thing we are always very happy to see. The good news? The film is very much alive (despite the writ­ers strikes it seems), so he tells Cine­plex Enter­tain­ment:

“We are cur­rently at the point where we have had a cou­ple drafts of the script and now we are talk­ing to dif­fer­ent direc­tors and try­ing to feel out who would be the best fit for it,”

“It has been a really fas­ci­nat­ing process to learn how Hol­ly­wood works. […] I just hope that what­ever comes out of this is com­pelling enter­tain­ment and is very rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ‘Gears of War’ uni­verse.”

Thanks Damien for send­ing this one in.

GoW art director to direct Thundercats film October 11th, 2007

Not related to the gears of war movie directly, how­ever it is of inter­est to the read­ers of this blog, so I am men­tion­ing it here.

Jerry O’Flaherty, art direc­tor for the Gears of War video game, will be under­tak­ing the chal­lenge of direct­ing Warner Bros’ CG-animated Thun­der­cats adap­ta­tion — so reports Vari­ety.

I think I would pre­fer a live action Thun­der­cats, maybe it’s just the thoughts of who could pull off the Chee­tara role, whilst look­ing sexy and not ruin­ing their career.

Are many peo­ple inter­ested in this movie?

Thanks to John again for the heads up!

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