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.

Game­Pro were given the oppor­tu­nity to talk with Gears of War movie writer Stu­art Beat­tie, in an exclu­sive inter­view. Here are some choice extracts from the infor­ma­tive article:

“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.

GameDaily have posted up an insight­ful inter­view with Cliff Bleszin­ski, inclined towards the devel­op­ment of the movie. It cov­ers the movie’s story-telling and script writ­ing by Stu­art Beat­tie, R-ratings and the cons of cast­ing wrestlers as the main char­ac­ters. I’ve extracted the high­lights below, for the full arti­cle click the link above! Thanks for the heads up John!

BIZ: What’s it like work­ing with Stu­art Beat­tie, the man who helped turn Pirates of the Caribbean into a Hol­ly­wood block­buster?

CliffyB: Stu is amaz­ing to work with because he knows Gears inside and out. He beat the game sev­eral times and he was hooked on mul­ti­player. You go into these Hol­ly­wood meet­ings and expect a cer­tain type of Hol­ly­wood peo­ple, many of whom I’ve met. […] He respects the fran­chise and he’s a fan of it. He also knows how to write a com­pelling movie and adap­ta­tion. […] I think we have a really great script and now it’s just a mat­ter of get­ting the right direc­tor attached and mak­ing sure it becomes a “AAA” block­buster movie.

[…] The fact that Gears is an M-rated fran­chise and involves peo­ple get­ting chain­sawed in half, it’s got to be a pretty f***ing hard­core movie.

[…] I get a lot of forum posts where Gears fans tell us we need to cast this wrestler as Mar­cus. I don’t give a f**k if the guy’s buff or six foot five. What mat­ters most is that this guy is charis­matic and he can act and is some­body com­pelling that you want to watch on screen. […] What mat­ters is charisma because you can’t fake that. […]

CliffyB: We shared every detail imag­in­able with Stu on the fran­chise as far as the story bible and all of the secrets that every­body wants to know about what went down in Gears of War. […] He knows the under­ly­ing themes of the fran­chise and all of the under­ly­ing moti­va­tions of each of the char­ac­ters. That’s fuel for the screen­play that he’s written.

[…] New Line, hav­ing done Lord of the Rings, they know how to back a very risky but also a poten­tially very lucra­tive fran­chise and make sure it’s treated with the respect it deserves.

Here’s our first solid video dis­cussing the live action adap­ta­tion of GoW and the ongo­ing pro­duc­tion of the film — from the man himself.

IGN have posted an inter­view with Rod Fer­gus­son, Gears of War pro­ducer, reveal­ing a cou­ple of tid-bits about the movie deal:

IGN: Can you tell us much about the movie deal?

Rod Fer­gus­son: There isn’t much to say right now. What peo­ple need to take away is that scripts get optioned all the time in Hol­ly­wood and that by no means [indi­cates] that it’s absolutely going to hap­pen that the movie gets cre­ated. They take their option and they may decide to do noth­ing with that option.

IGN: So New Line has optioned the script?

Rod Fer­gus­son: They have, yeah. They have a writer, Stu­art Beat­tie, who wrote ‘Col­lat­eral’ and ‘Derailed’, and was a con­tribut­ing writer to the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ movies. And so he’s a big name script writer, and he’s already writ­ten a treatment.