14 DAY TRIAL // For some time BioWare has talked about their wish to create a movie based on the Mass Effect franchise but until now there have been no clear details about the project and how the production company Legendary Pictures plans to make it appealing to the mainstream audience.
Now the team working on the movie, which seems to be in the early stages of production, has confirmed that the main character will be the male version of Shepard, with the first name John, and that the adventures that he will go through are not those seen in the first or the second video games set in the same universe.
At the moment BioWare is working on Mass Effect 3, which should be out in the first few month of 2012, and its not clear whether Legendary Pictures is planning to use the same basic concepts for the movie.
An alien assault on Earth, War of the Worlds style, could probably draw in quite a bit crowd into theaters, but it's not clear how an adventure that will take players about 20 hours to complete will be compressed into a movie of about 120 minutes.
Legendary Pictures says that, at the moment, there are no actors lined up to play Commander Shepard and that Seth Rogen will not be playing the Joker (apparently this question has been trending on Twitter).
The studio also says that if the first movie is successful a trilogy might be developed, set in the same universe, and offered some hints that Daft Punk, the well known electronica band that also scored the latest Tron movie, might be handling the soundtrack.
It's highly unlikely that the Mass Effect movie will be launched at the same time as the third game in the series so expect to learn more about the project during the spring and the summer of next year.