Making a movie out of the hit video game Gears of War has always sounded like a no-brainer. However, despite multiple attempts over the past decade, it’s never come to fruition. Now, Universal and Microsoft have announced they’re once again going to try and bring the sci-fi action franchise to the big screen.
The announcement was made on a live stream of the upcoming sequel, Gears of War 4, which comes to Xbox One later this month.
“As a way to support the franchise, the next logical step was to make the movie,” Rod Fergusson, the head of development at the Coalition (which makes Gears of War), told Variety. “We’d done comics and novels in the past but the opportunity to work with Universal to bring the movie to life was perfect.”
No directors or writers are attached but producers Scott Stuber (Ted) and Dylan Clark (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) will work on getting those pieces in place.
So is this actually going to happen? Like with most video game adaptations, we’ll believe it when we see it. As previously mentioned, this is just the latest attempt to bring Gears of War to the big screen. New Line had the rights as far back as 2008 with names like Len Wiseman (Underworld), Billy Ray (The Hunger Games) and Chris Morgan (Fast and Furious) all attached at various points.
“I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers,” Fergusson told Variety. “If you have this great IP with a deep backstory and lots of lore that you can make interesting stories out of it’s great, but if you just go after the gaming audience then it isn’t going to be a successful movie. That’s one of the great things about working with Universal. We’re finding that line where we can say it has enough lore and canon that it feels genuine to the game while at the same time going beyond that and asking ‘OK what makes a great movie?’”
[Variety]