14 DAY TRIAL // Way back in March 2007, New Line Cinema signed a preliminary deal with Microsoft regarding the rights to use the Gears of War intellectual property for a movie or a series of movies. After the game broke all sales records for the Xbox 360, with over 4,5 million units shipped, it seems that the movie project is getting a lot of attention.
Temple Hill Entertainment is the company selected for production duties by New Line Cinema. And Wyck Godfrey is in charge of the Gears of War movie project. He has recently detailed a few options that the producers have already made.
Stuart Beattie, who has previously worked on the Tom Cruise assassin story Collateral with director Michael Mann and also on Pirates of the Caribbean, will be creating the script for the movie. Epic's own Gears of War developer Cliff Bleszinkski is set to oversee and offer creative input, making sure that the movie script doesn't stray too far from the Gears universe. Apparently, the events depicted in the movie will not be those in the game, but rather a different part of the struggle that humans must fight when Emergence Day hits. The Gears units will still play an integral part, but the scope of the movie will be much greater.
Godfrey also said that his company was in talks with "a director we're about to attach," and that "We'll hopefully make that early next year for the summer of 2010". So it appears that production will begin early in 2009 and there's no chance of seeing the movie in theaters before 2010. Which is a shame.
And because of the alien world and alien enemies that will make their appearance on screen, it seems that the movie will be light on the acting. Especially when considering that it will most likely be shot on the green screen, with a lot of computer-generated graphics added later to make the Gears of War universe come to life. Will it end up looking more like a videogame than a movie?