Epic Games tried to bring a Gears of War movie to the big screen nearly a decade ago, but as things often do in Hollywood, things fell apart and the adaptation was ultimately canceled. But it looks like Microsoft wants to take another chainsaw stab at the idea…
Announced yesterday during a massive Gears livestream, The Coalition’s Rod Fergusson said that Microsoft is teaming up with Universal to distribute the film. Production will be handled by Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark of Bluegrass Films, who have previously worked on dozens of films including Ted and the upcoming Patriots Day.
While it was too early to speculate about who would play Marcus Fenix, Fergusson did say that the film won’t necessarily be based on the storyline from the games:
When you do a movie like this, you have to… realize that it’s a different medium with a different audience. I think if you were to go in and say, like, “OK, it’s got to be completely 100% faithful to the game canon,” or the story of the game, like, what’s going to end up happening is… it’s not going to be the best movie. The big thing we’re really trying to focus on is making the best Gears movie possible, as opposed to the one that’s the most closest to the game.
The developer later expanded on his plan to create a great movie that’s not wedded to the game’s plot in an interview with Variety:
“I think you have to let the movies be the movies,” Fergusson said. “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.”
We don’t know when Gears of War will hit theaters, but Gears of War 4 will be available for the PC and Xbox One on October 11 (or four days earlier if you sprung for the Ultimate Edition).
