Epic has just hired a new producer, Scott Stuber, to take over and get Gears of War onto the big screen.
Depending on who you ask, this is a long time coming… but it might be better if Epic just let this one go.
It’s A Silly, Silly Game
This is a video game where one of the key McGuffins, the Resonator, is basically a bomb that maps things. Seriously, walk up to somebody in the street and try to explain the concept to them without it sounding stupid.
This doesn’t mean it’s not fun to play, mind you, quite the opposite, just that nobody plays this game for the story. That’s not a problem when you’ve got a controller in your hands, but a fairly serious one when you’ve got a bucket of popcorn in them.
Epic Doesn’t Seem Willing To Allow Major Changes
By all accounts, Epic walked away from their last film deal because New Line Cinema wanted to change, well, anything about the game.
Which is a problem because map bombs. True, Hollywood has a record of taking video games with no decent story and turning them into movies with infinite worse stories; Sit through Double Dragon, Wing Commander, or Doom if you don’t believe it. But that doesn’t mean the game itself is sacrosanct and should be preserved for all time.
It’ll Have A Hard Time Standing Out
So, what’s the hook for the wider audience when it comes to Gears Of War?
That’s not a sarcastic question. It’s not hard to find movies about meatheads blasting aliens, but it’s hard to find movies, especially modern movies, about meatheads blasting aliens that work well, or that capture audience attention. Every time a video game movie has relied on its fan base to push it to a wider audience, it’s failed, and Gears’ fanbase has slipped a little in recent years: Witness Judgment‘s lackluster sales. So what does Gears have that a dozen spec scripts in Hollywood don’t?
None of this is to say the Gears of War movie is doomed to suck, provided it gets made. I can think of two directors, John Carpenter and Neil Marshall, right off the bat who could turn it into a fun romp, at the very least. It’s just Epic might want to ask itself what the appeal is for non-gamers, before pushing forward with the movie.