It’s been three years since New Line Cinema purchased the rights to produce a film based around the Gears of War video games, and since then there have been numerous rumours about directors and cast members, as well as development stalling, starting, and stalling and starting again. But now it looks like production has hit its biggest snag to date, and put the entire movie’s future in doubt.
Chris Morgan (the man behind the Wanted screenplay) was attached to perform script rewrites for the film; that was most likely a prequel to the original game, and was to tell a, multi-generational, epic story about a war with brutes from underground known as the Locust Horde; and Len Wiseman (Die Hard 4.0) was to direct the picture, even having hinted that his wife, Kate Beckinsale (Underworld), may have starred.
Len however has now moved on to other projects (he’s currently working on Nocturne; a film about a group of people that survive an apocalypse), as New Line have attempted to reign in the epic story in favour of a much simpler, invasion themed, storyline, and severely slashed the budget of over $100 million, to a sum the will be considerably less.
Although it’s not entirely surprising that New Line are getting cold feet, as Gears is fairly old new at the minute within gaming circles, and video game movies are extremely hit and miss anyway; even hits such as Tomb Raider and Resident Evil aren’t generally well received, and the less said about misses such as Max Payne the better; but their stalling and reigning in of this picture may have cost them an epic hit, as the Gears series has so many sci-fi and character elements (not to mention stunning action potential) that could make it work for people outside the gaming community.
But for now at least, Gears of War has not only lost its director, but is in need of a full script rewrite (in order to accommodate for New Line’s scaled down ideas and tightened purse strings), and for now, looks to be indefinitely postponed.
