It looks like there's big trouble for the Gears of War movie. According to an L.A. Times blog, the film has had its budget slashed, its director (Len Wiseman) is reportedly turning his attention to another project and may not be involved at all when/if the film hits the production stage, and the film's producers are looking for new writers to handle a stripped down version of the story. The movie's official release date of 2010 is looking increasingly unlikely. Originally, the movie was planned as a sprawling, $100 Million epic, but the new Gears (if it happens) will be a more modest flick.
As the L.A. Times points out: Video game adaptations have a unique way of coming about. At the beginning stages, the projects tend to have a huge amount of "Heat." It's an easier sell in Hollywood to be able to show development people an established property with a built-in fan base than to take something totally untried and try to raise $100 million bucks on it. But the problem comes in when Hollywood actually tries to make the picture.
Video games are, almost always, based loosely on movies and movie genres (How many reviews have you read that called a game "cinematic?) so making a game movie is essentially like making a movie version of something already based on a movie, which may be too derivative even for the modern film industry. Some kinds of stories lend themselves to games and not movies (and vice-versa) so putting together a good movie based on a game presents perhaps insurmountable difficulties.
It's also hard to make a movie based on a video game because we like to play video games. You can't play a movie and no one has found a way yet to make a movie feel like a video game -- it might be impossible.
As history has shown us again and again, movies based on games suck, but Gears could be the exception. Personally, I enjoy "stripped down" movies more than epics -- District 9 was more to my liking than Avatar -- so I don't think that's bad news, necessarily, but I wonder if we'll ever see a Gears movie.
What do you think? Are you bummed or happy that Gears is having problems making it to a theater-near-you?
Source: L.A. Times
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Comments
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Gibsonrocker89
I think if they kept it at a lower budget (about 30 million) and completely animated like they did with FF Advent children it would still do pretty well and not disappoint any of the games fans by casting The Rock or Gerard Butler as Marcus.
imonahorse
i wish naughty dog would produce an uncharted movie
Jimi0088
Every game made into a movie Sucks Balls and Tickles Taints and that's not good. They all are horrible. They all stray off from the games storyline and focus. Don't make Prince of Persia, Gears of War, Mass Effect, and the Metal Gear movie. They will tarnish the games credibility. Please No More Game Movies.
xboxslives
NOOOOO!!! I had some hope for the movie... it could have been epic but Now I know for sure this is gonna be another DOOM, Guess they will just cast the damn rock for this crap.
VIDEO GAME MOVIES DON'T HAVE TO SUCK.... JUST MAKE THEM CGI MOVIES, HIRE THE SAME VOICE ACTORS & NO NEED TO HIRE ACTORS THAT RESEMBLE THE CHARACTER. HIRE PIXAR TO MAKE A GEARS OF WAR, HALO FILM & I WILL WATCH IT.
for those talking about Resident Evil, The new triliogy could be good kill the Alice story line after the 4th film that introduces Chris Redfield & make him the main protaganist in the 5 & 6th film
X02
How about movies based around games that almost all (and I mean all) people know such as:
Tetris the movie: "This building's coming down all around us! We're gonna be crushed...unless stack we can stacks these bricks in rows. Then we might have a chance!
or
SkiFree the movie: ...damn. Freakin' Yeti...
I mean, they already made an Asteroids game with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck. It's worth a shot.
xN7 SNiiPer209x
let james cameron fund and produce this movie. he has enough money and knows how to make a movie that already has a great story.
jal1113
O COME ON MAN! the one movie that couldve been the exception the one movie tha couldve actaully set a standard for games making that crossover to movies and ppl back out. i mean with a slashed budget wouldve made it better since more modest budgets tend to mean mroe modest movies but man this is just mean. and jsut so ppl kno the only thing that made me raise an eyebrow about the halo movies was casting denzel washington for chief. that and to make a movie feel like a game i thought that doom did that nicely with tis first person scene and honestly if mroe movies did that especailly from start to finish without being cheesy like other games with real actors like back in the 90's then for once you would have a literal crossover thats worth watching.
PersonaShin
A Gears movie I don't really want. Now, a Shadow of the Colossus movie? That'd be kickass.
Malapropism
i already don't like the gears of war story, isn't it basically there are beings underground who are coming above ground to kick human ass?
and then you throw in a few sideplots, like one of the guys has a wife who is missing,
i mean really, if they did make a movie based on gears of war, what would draw you to go see that movie? a chainsaw gun for an 8 dollar movie ticket?
JDarkley
Here's the thing: Games and movies are different mediums. Cinema has been adapting from other mediums sense its infancy. It started with books, which were easy enough because all film0makers really had to do was take the text of the book and convert it into a screenplay. Later down the line there was comic book adaptations. These were not as successful at first because drawing Superman flying and filming him do the same are two different tasks entirely (though the first two Superman movies were great films). While both are visual mediums, they each have different conventions that make displaying the same action visually two different processes. Film-makers need to know which of these conventions of the original medium can work well in the medium of cinema. Now the issue of game adaptations has come up and the problem with that is film-makers don't know what conventions of gaming will work on film. Doom, for example, had first-person segments which Roger Ebert likened to "watching somebody play a game and not letting you have a turn." Yes, showing scenes like that is faithful to the game, but it wasn't much fun to watch, was it? The Resident Evil movies have been successful (at least financially) because somebody who hasn't played the games can appreciate them for the popcorn entertainment that they are. Why is this? Because they were very loosely adapted from the source material. Were they great movies? Hell no, but they cut out stuff from the game that wouldn't work in the film. Another point: earlier comic adaptations sucked. Now look at movies like Iron Man, Spider-Man 2, and the Dark Knight. The video game-to-movie genre is still in it's infancy. Give it ten or so years, I'm sure that a decent video game movie will pop up at some point, so long as the film-makers know what the hell they are doing.
MindCarrot
I am glad. I know the only thing they would have gotten right in that movie are the names and no one really gives a S$%# about the names as long as the setting, action and attitude are right. Let this ship sink.
ssdanku
The problem with video games getting turn into movies, is that video games draw people into the story and characters by using the game play and u actually feel like your taking part in the adventure. Its hard for a movie to this b/c its simple not as interactive as video games are. I'm not saying movies don't draw you in, but usually movies that do draw you in are big budget films, as long as movie studios refuse to use a big budget for any form of video game movie there will never be an actually GOOD video game movie. Though don't worry they will continue to throw millions of dollars at another crappy spider-man movie, and remaking old 80 shows into movies.
jungleman67
not worth it. the only one i want to see is halo
hailtothehill
Gears of War was a great game with a decent story. It's themes are ones that we have seen many times over. I would definitely go see a movie if it came out, but there are plenty of other games out there that I would rather see a movie from. Bioshock has a unique storyline that can be played with a bit and still be brilliant. The eye candy mixed with the setting of Bioshock is enough to intrigue even the non-gamers out there (if there are any left). I'd rather see a Bioshock movie made.
Side note: Watching Clash of the Titans really got me excited about a possible WoW movie in the works. Anyone else get that feeling?
UNrealx007
Well im very disapointed that the movie may not happen i was really hoping for this to come into a movie, but at the same time its good. Because movies that were once games usually suck. And after Gears 2 came out I dont wanna be even more Driven away from Gears than i already am.
PS: Epic Games please dont make Gears 3 the same as gears 2 cuz you'll lose LOTS of money.
linc77
this sucks for gears,it had a good story and maybe it couldve made money. Their loss. What about an inFamous movie? That had a good comic book feel to it, they could easily turn inFamous into the next spider man
lowkevmic
I think a video game movie could be good, if they simply stick to the storyline of the actual game, and build from that. What Hollywood likes to do, is try and make a completely new stroy and try and see where those video game characters will fit. Which never works. Every Video game movie you can think of, all had a storyline, that was never even seen in the game. But since the names and characters from the video game are still there, they'll call it a video game movie. Now with Gears, there is a very good story, that if followed, and maybe slightly expanded can make for a really good movie. The story of Marcus Fenix's father can be better explained. What events really led to the trial of Marcus Fenix?? What was the world really like before E-Day?? A deeper explination of the characters in the game. There are so many layers to the Gears story, that if Hollywood would just stick to the script, and not try to improve on somethign that is already good. Then maybe we might be lucky enough to see a good flick. But for a game like Gears, it would be nice to see it on a more epic scale, rather than just a stripped down version of it.
morningdefense
I would love to see a Resident Evil 4 movie with LEON that would be enough to end all RE movies. Also I would love to see Marvel do the Darkness and I want to see maybe a lost planet movie.
kwfang
No surprise there the movie is not going to made at all just like the Halo movie good games that we fans would love to see a movie will just never happen
Video game movies that i would love to see are...
1. Metal Gear Solid
2. God of War
3. Resident Evil (The right way)
4. Halo
5. Gears of War
6. (This would be really stupid IMO but just throwing it out there) Kingdom Hearts
Fuzion9
man that sucks, but I guess I'm not surprised, after all video game based movies tend to suck. But I thought I heard Cliffy B was helping out with it so I had hope. Oh well.
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