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.

The IESB are report­ing that Len Wise­man is no longer involved with the Escape from New York remake, which at first glance would imply that he plans to work on GoW. How­ever, through IESB’s con­tacts, it is now rumored that he is not involved in the video game adap­ta­tion either, and, more alarm­ingly, that New Line Cin­ema might pull out altogether:

Wise­man is also off the video game adap­ta­tion and New Line Cin­ema will most likely not move for­ward with the film at all. Our source is say­ing that the stu­dio has con­cerns with bal­loon­ing bud­get of the film.

We’ll have to wait and see what hap­pens on this one folks. Thanks for the heads up Philip.

Oh my word, that was fast. Latino review, who also posted an early treat­ment of the Halo Movie back in the day, have posted up a sneak pre­view of the Gears of War movie adap­ta­tion. How much of this will appear in the final film remains to be seen, though it seems fairly rep­utable and Stu­art Beat­tie (Pirates of the Caribbean, Col­lat­eral) has done a good job. I’m going to say this now — this sto­ry­line will change before the film is released, likely when a direc­tor is assigned to the project and he begins assert­ing his vision.

The arti­cle at Latino is pretty long so I am going to pro­vide a sum­mary here. Read the rest of this entry »

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.