Back in 2007 news broke that Microsoft was actively trying to purse a feature film based on their hit Xbox 360 exclusive franchise Gears of War. They even had director Len Wisemen (Live Free or Die Hard, Total Recall) attached to helm the project. Obviously, nothing came to fruition as the film ended up in development hell for almost a decade. Now with the release of Gears of War 4 Microsoft (via Variety) announced along with Universal Studios the company will now once again try to revive the Gears of War franchise as a feature film. Producers Scott Stuber (Ted) and Dylan Clark (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) have also boarded to upcoming video game movie project.
Video game head Rod Fergusson goes onto talk about the state of video game movies and how this is the right time to adapt Gears of war for film: “As a way to support the franchise the next logical step was to make the movie. We’d done comics and novels in the past but the opportunity to work with Universal to bring the movie to life was perfect.” He goes onto say that a video game movie doesn’t need to be an exact adaption of a video game to be successful:
“I think you have to let the movies be the movies. They’re two different mediums, and two different audiences in some cases, and I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers. 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?’”
No director or screenwriter has been found for the project. Back in 07 many fans wanted WWE Superstar Bautista to play the role of Marcus Fenix. Of course at the time he wasn’t much of an actor (Only appearing in a couple very small roles like Smallville) however a decade later Dave Bautista is a full blown actor. With his success in Guardians of the Galaxy and Specter maybe it’s time for him to headliner his own franchise?
Gears of War has no set release date