Latino Review is a web­site infa­mous for its early pre­views, pub­li­ca­tions and reviews of in-development first draft scripts. This time they have done it again with a review of Bruckheimer’s Prince of Per­sia adap­ta­tion, with screen­play writ­ten by Jor­dan Mech­ner and Jef­frey Nach­manoff. Their conclusion?

Rat­ing: A-, Almost Per­fect

What does that mean in real terms? Not a lot really, but it is encour­ag­ing. To sur­mise the fairly lengthy review:

• Expect a lot of Park­our (remem­ber that scene in Casino Royale?) — Per­son­ally I feel that this film is per­fect for some park­our exhi­bi­tion­ism, meld­ing seam­lessly with the sub­ject mat­ter: “Park­our is a phys­i­cal art of French ori­gin, the aim of which is to move from point A to point B as effi­ciently and quickly as pos­si­ble, using prin­ci­pally the abil­i­ties of the human body.”
• The script begins with Nizam and the Per­sian Army inter­cept­ing some smug­glers. Dis­tan is intro­duced in a knife throw­ing contest.
• Dis­tan is soon in pos­ses­sion of a cer­e­mo­nial dag­ger with a glass han­dle filled with sand and encrusted with stones.
• By the end of act 1 the sto­ry­line of the film is setup (not revealed here) and the pow­ers of the dag­ger briefly unveiled.

And here is a prospec­tive movie poster:

Three con­cept images and a “logo treat­ment” were released to the pub­lic, the last of which looks might­ily impressive.

19 year old Aus­tralian Char­lie Clausen has been reported as the lead in the video game adap­ta­tion which could be his first big hol­ly­wood break. This report seems to have come from an Aus­tralian mag­a­zine called “Hyper”. IMDb cur­rently lists Clausen as attached and no con­fir­ma­tion of his role in the movie exists. How­ever many web­sites includ­ing IGN are stat­ing this as fact, which remains to be seen — some of his IMDb pro­file shots do bear a resem­blance to the Prince.

With­out a fiz­zle or a PoP for nigh on three years the project seemed almost dead. Or maybe it was just because of Jerry Bruckheimer’s busi­ness in a mul­ti­tude of suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tions, oh, take for instance the Pirates of the Caribbean tril­ogy (every­thing is a trilogy!).

But alas! In April 2007 we have some announce­ments. A direc­tor has been assigned — the man behind The Rock and Bad Boys, but also the Pearl Har­bor atroc­ity (just the film) — Michael Bay is set to direct; we can all judge for our­selves his present form when The Trans­form­ers movie lands this sum­mer. As a result, shoot­ing for this movie will be unlikely to com­mence until the Fall.

Shack­news also reports that Jef­frey Nach­manoff, screen­writer for  “The Day After Tomor­row”, is devel­op­ing “revi­sions” of Mechner’s script. Who knows where this could leave us — though the sto­ry­line is meant to be along the lines of “retain­ing the ele­ments of the evil vizier seek­ing to con­trol the sands of time, and the pres­ence of the princess-turned-sidekick Farah”.

With this news comes a pro­jected Sum­mer 2009 release date. 

As far back as 2004, Vari­ety reported that Jerry Bruck­heimer, world famous pro­ducer behind films such as Black Hawk Down and Pirates of the Caribbean, was nego­ti­at­ing a “seven fig­ure” deal to obtain the movie rights to Ubisoft’s Prince of Per­sia fran­chise — whilst the film itself would fall to Dis­ney to develop.

It was also reported that Jor­dan Mech­ner, behind the sto­ry­lines in the video games, would be work­ing on the scripts first drafts, with John August (Big Fish, Go) super­vis­ing and exec­u­tive pro­duc­ing. Mike Sten­son and Chad Oman are also exec­u­tive producers.

Those look­ing for a faith­ful adap­ta­tion of the fran­chise might be a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed, Mechner’s first quote states, “Rather than do a straight beat-for-beat adap­ta­tion of the new videogame, we’re tak­ing some cool ele­ments from the game and using them to craft a new story — much as ‘Pirates’ did with the theme park ride.”

Cool ele­ments sounds omi­nous. The arti­cle goes on to liken the Prince with Indi­ana Jones and the par­al­lels are clear; dun­geons, sand, the 9th cen­tury (oh wait). What was one of the last Disney/Bruckheimer part­ner­ships? The bril­liant (this is sar­casm) King Arthur.