On March 20th Vari­ety reported that New Line had picked up the fea­ture rights for Epic’s Gears of War. Stu­art Beat­tie, the mind behind Pirates of the Caribbean and Col­lat­eral, is said to be work­ing on the big screen adap­ta­tion of the game along­side pro­duc­ers Marty Bowen and Wyck God­frey work­ing under the moniker “Tem­ple Hill”.

Rumors sug­gest that with smooth video game and movie devel­op­ment Epic would look to make a simul­ta­ne­ous release of two new fea­tures to their lat­est franchise.

For those not in the know, Gears of War became the 4th biggest sell­ing game in 2006, is cur­rently the most pop­u­lar Xbox 360 online title and won game of the year at “Game Devel­op­ers Choice Awards and the Inter­ac­tive Achieve­ment Awards.”

Spe­cific sto­ry­lines are as of yet unknown, although Epic VP did state, “We wanted to make an enter­tain­ment prop­erty that’s not just for games but for other media.”

With script devel­op­ment will come the ten­ta­tive search for a direc­tor to spear-head the project. The par­ties involved are look­ing toward a 2009 release date, should things go smoothly.

For gamers, the pos­i­tive point to note is that lead game designer Cliff Bleszin­ski (we all know him as Cliffy B) will be exec­u­tive pro­ducer and “devel­op­ment con­sul­tant” to Epic.

“Our first and fore­most phi­los­o­phy is to do no harm, so we debated heav­ily the idea of doing a movie at all. […] But we feel we stacked the deck in our favor by work­ing with the best play­ers.” says Epic VP.

EDIT: Yahoo adds,

Screen­writer Beattie’s involve­ment with the project didn’t come over a high-priced meal on Sun­set Boule­vard, but with a sim­ple mes­sage sent over Xbox Live. Beat­tie told Reuters that while play­ing Gears of War one night, “This New Line exec Jeff Katz dropped me a mes­sage in my Xbox Live account say­ing, ‘If we bought the game you’re play­ing right now, would you write it?’ And this was back in Decem­ber. It shows you how on-the-ball New Line was. I’m going to write off my Xbox Live this year, accounting-wise.”

and again:

Beat­tie believes that if you tell a good story, audi­ences will respond, and he thinks the game’s set­ting and scope will help in that respect.

“For me, it’s a great, rich and unique world that I have never seen before, and it’s a genre that has only been hinted at in films like ‘Aliens,“‘ he said. “The epic sci-fi war movie has yet to be done, and that’s what ‘Gears’ is.”

Offi­cial Movie Announcement

Let’s see where this goes.