A long-in-development Gears of War movie may finally be picking up speed.
A feature film adaptation of the video game Gears of War, long in development but recently on the back burner, is being actively developed by producers Dylan Clark (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) and Scott Stuber (Central Intelligence), the latter of whom has been working on the project for three years.
The news was announced by Microsoft during a livestream for the upcoming release of Gears of War 4, with the company revealing that the project has found a home at Universal Pictures (who apparently did not feel sufficiently burned by the box office flameout of its Warcraft adaptation).
Gears of War is a third person shooter game that follows the members of Delta Squad, a team of soldiers tasked with saving the human inhabitants of a planet called Sera from an alien force known as the Locust Horde (among other creatures). It is not clear how much of that storyline will be retained for the movie or whether original lead character Marcus Fenix will be featured in the film.
Rod Fergusson, head of game developer The Coalition, said, "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."
We'll see if a Gears of War movie can get past that very barrier that Fergusson spoke about. Meanwhile, Gears of War 4 arrives on Xbox One and Microsoft Windows next Tuesday (October 11).
Source: Variety
