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?

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!

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.

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.

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.

“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

The debut trailer:

The announcement:

“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.

Jerry O’Flaherty, art director for the Gears of War video game, will be undertaking the challenge of directing Warner Bros’ CG-animated Thundercats adaptation — so reports Variety.

I think I would prefer a live action Thundercats, maybe it’s just the thoughts of who could pull off the Cheetara role, whilst looking sexy and not ruining their career.

Are many people interested in this movie?

Thanks to John again for the heads up!

“The perception of videogames in Hollywood is changing slowly. Hollywood likes to do what’s proven. They’ve already proved that books work, and plays can work, and recently that comic books can work. But they’ve yet to have a film be as successful as say Spider-Man, that’s based on a videogame. 

[…] While there are more and more videogame movies being made because there are more and more videogames being made, there still hasn’t been that one that has hit it out of the park yet. At the moment, I would say the perception of videogame movies in Hollywood is: they are interested, they’re intrigued, but they’re still not completely sure if it can actually work.”

As for the use of a 300-esque green screen approach,

“[…] That film was shot completely on green screen, which is amazing when you actually see the film. It’s probably how we’re going to do Gears of War.”

[Referring to GOW] It’s a planet and it’s a bubble and it’s a building. It’s an epic sci-fi war and an enormous film. To get it made at all, the only way to make it for a price is to be on a soundstage. But the game also has that look, which is really interesting, so I think it will dovetail really nicely.”

Beattie also hopes that the film will be “extremely collaborative”.

As to our previous story, wherein we reported that the movie could be on hold, we received this very encouraging E-mail,

GEARS OF WAR is not stalled in any way, shape, or form. We are simply in the process of finding the right director. This is always a delicate and difficult task, and with multiple looming strikes, even more so. Be patient, stay tuned, news will come.