The Gears of War movie adap­ta­tion has been pretty quiet of recent. In April this year rumors that pro­duc­tion on a Gears of War movie had slowed down kicked up again–this time from New Line stu­dio sources (as reported by LATimes). Reports sug­gested the sto­ry­line and bud­get were being dra­mat­i­cally scaled back and that Len Wise­man would be focussing on other projects, namely Noc­ture. The orig­i­nal bud­get was expected to be around $100m, it is now thought to be con­sid­er­ably less.

The script by Chris Mor­gan (“Wanted”) had a lot of buzz around it, and was tweaked late last year by Billy Ray, which included a lot of char­ac­ter work. Reports were good, a sprawl­ing and epic action movie. The change to the bud­get how­ever makes the film much less epic, and much more a sim­ple inva­sion story. With this in mind, New Line are search­ing for writ­ers to make these changes. Until this is ready, pro­duc­tion is stalled.

Wise­man has now been attached to the Total Recall remake, and will almost cer­tainly not be direct­ing the Gears movie. Add to this that Kate Beck­in­sale is his wife, and we’ve lost our only cast member.

What now for the Gears of War movie? A 2012 release? A low bud­get action film?

Just as I cast my doubts on the pro­duc­tion of the Gears of War movie, it rears its head at this year’s SDCC with a panel fea­tur­ing Len Wise­man (direc­tor) and Chris Mor­gan (writer, Wanted). Pro­duc­tion is still in the ear­li­est stages, but more importantly—it is still in pro­duc­tion. How early? No con­cept art, cast­ing or pro­duc­tion stills yet. Wise­man and Mor­gan did how­ever offer up their thoughts on the adaptation.

Cast­ing

The first ques­tions con­cerned cast­ing, in par­tic­u­lar the (entirely unsub­stan­ti­ated) rumors that wrestlers would be cast as main char­ac­ters. Wise­man said that cast­ing strong men wouldn’t be his choice, instead, “I’m look­ing for an actor for the role and then [I’ll] put him into shape”, adding “I’m always think­ing who could play the best Mar­cus. You want to get hooked into the char­ac­ter [first] and then all the amaz­ing spectacle.”

As for the cast­ing of Maria, Len Wise­man wants his wife Kate Beck­in­sale to play the badass female role, “If I can con­vince [Kate Beck­in­sale] — and I think I have a shot — I’d love to see that.”

Plot

Emer­gence day will play a big role in the movie’s plot, but the films are unlikely to closely fol­low the games. Whilst promis­ing to fol­low the Gears his­tory closely, he made no guar­an­tees about “appeas­ing gamers”. Rod Fer­gu­son, the game’s exec­u­tive pro­ducer, explained:

“You can be too tied to what is the game. We’re so ori­ented at grab­bing the gam­ing audi­ence, we don’t leave behind what shouldn’t be in the movie. We’re about mak­ing the best movie pos­si­ble, not about mak­ing Gears of War the game into a movie… pre­vi­ous movies haven’t been will­ing to let go. We had only three pages [of notes for Wise­man]. ‘Please don’t kill Marcus.’

To sum­ma­rize, the stu­dios have been asked to:

“make the best movie pos­si­ble that fits your medium.”

Changes may include female COGs.

Wise­man and Mor­gan add:

“The tone of the char­ac­ters and how they inter­act with each other [lends to] the over­all expe­ri­ence of the movie. Look at Aliens in terms of the dark envi­ron­ment, but then how much fun you have with the characters.”

“Even though the world is lit­er­ally at an end, they still joke. They have real emo­tion and compassion.”

Before Wise­man concludes,

“There’s so much opin­ion out there about what this movie should be and shouldn’t be, it falls on a very small group of peo­ple… and I’m one of those peo­ple. Are you going to respect the game? Of course I am. It is a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence from watch­ing a movie, but it’s my job of trans­lat­ing it into the best cin­e­matic story [possible].”

Thanks Bill!

News has been slow, and that’s an under­state­ment — it’s been almost a year. I apol­o­gize that the con­tent of the blog hasn’t been updated more often, but the truth of it is, there hasn’t been any news. The Gears of War movie has slipped into pro­duc­tion hell; we can only spec­u­late as to why — inter­est, finance and sched­ul­ing are some of the biggest contenders.

The video game adap­ta­tion as such is still in very early stages, despite hav­ing announced that Len Wise­man would direct; news that may no longer hold true given the length of time since the last update. We cer­tainly won’t be meet­ing the rumored 2010 Sum­mer release date, if pro­duc­tion ramped up this com­ing Jan­u­ary the best we could hope for is Spring 2011.

Some fan art

To lighten the mood a lit­tle I give you some fan art pro­duced by Brian Speer, depict­ing Batista as Mar­cus and also fea­tur­ing The Rock, inevitably, com­ments on this post will now turn into a cast­ing discussion.

Vari­ety are report­ing that movie stu­dio Leg­endary Pic­tures will be co-financing and co-producing the Gears of War movie adap­ta­tion, to be directed by Len Wiseman.

It’s the first New Line project that Leg­endary has signed onto since the mini-major was folded into Warner Bros. ear­lier this year. Leg­endary has a deal to co-finance and co-produce at WB.

“Gears of War” has been set up at New Line since early last year with Marty Bowen and Wyck God­frey pro­duc­ing through their Tem­ple Hill ban­ner. “Gears” lead designer Cliff Bleszin­ski is exec pro­duc­ing and con­sult­ing for devel­oper Epic, which owns the rights.

Len Wise­man is direct­ing with Chris Mor­gan writ­ing the script. First draft was penned by Stu­art Beattie.

Vari­ety are report­ing that Len Wise­man (Under­world) shall be tak­ing the helm on the Gears of War movie. We reported this rumor in August last year. Chris Mor­gan (Fast and the Furi­ous: Tokyo Drift) is also writ­ing a new draft based on Stu­art Beattie’s treatment:

Len Wise­man is suit­ing up to direct New Line’s “Gears of War,” based on Microsoft and Epic Games’ hit vidgame.

Chris Mor­gan is pen­ning a new draft of the actioner that Stu­art Beat­tie orig­i­nally tack­led. Scribe’s cred­its include Universal’s upcom­ing “Wanted” and “The Fast and the Furi­ous: Tokyo Drift.”

Fan­boys have been spec­u­lat­ing for nearly a year that Wise­man may helm the project; the game was fea­tured in his most recent pic, “Live Free or Die Hard.” But talks with New Line took place only over the last sev­eral months.

Wise­man will develop the story with Morgan.

I think the gen­eral con­sen­sus, from when Wise­man was pre­vi­ously rumored, was that he is a bad choice of direc­tor. Bring­ing in Chris Mor­gan, some­one that has worked on Fast and the Furi­ous 3 and lit­tle that is crit­i­cally acclaimed, sug­gests that the cre­ative minds behind this are want­ing to cre­ate an action-filled no brainer, with the major­ity of thought going into cool-looking CG action sequences rather than sto­ry­line and plot arcs. This news could poten­tially spell out doom (no pun intended) for the movie, con­demn­ing it to the world of low brow over the top action flicks. Gears surely deserves better.

At last, we have some big juicy news to get our hun­gry chain­saws plunged into. Wyck God­frey, (pro­ducer of Eragon, AVP, I Robot), has spo­ken out about the Gears adap­ta­tion for the big screen:

“We’ve got our script on and a direc­tor we’re about to attach. We’ll hope­fully make [the Gears of War movie] early next year for the sum­mer of 2010.”

Thanks Elias, Com­ing Soon

… in case you some­how missed it, which I can scarcely believe.

The debut trailer:

The announce­ment:

CliffyB has been talk­ing to the media about the sta­tus of the Gears of War movie again, which is some­thing we are always very happy to see. The good news? The film is very much alive (despite the writ­ers strikes it seems), so he tells Cine­plex Enter­tain­ment:

“We are cur­rently at the point where we have had a cou­ple drafts of the script and now we are talk­ing to dif­fer­ent direc­tors and try­ing to feel out who would be the best fit for it,”

“It has been a really fas­ci­nat­ing process to learn how Hol­ly­wood works. […] I just hope that what­ever comes out of this is com­pelling enter­tain­ment and is very rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the ‘Gears of War’ uni­verse.”

Thanks Damien for send­ing this one in.