Not related to the gears of war movie directly, how­ever it is of inter­est to the read­ers of this blog, so I am men­tion­ing it here.

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!

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.

The IESB are report­ing that Len Wise­man is no longer involved with the Escape from New York remake, which at first glance would imply that he plans to work on GoW. How­ever, through IESB’s con­tacts, it is now rumored that he is not involved in the video game adap­ta­tion either, and, more alarm­ingly, that New Line Cin­ema might pull out altogether:

Wise­man is also off the video game adap­ta­tion and New Line Cin­ema will most likely not move for­ward with the film at all. Our source is say­ing that the stu­dio has con­cerns with bal­loon­ing bud­get of the film.

We’ll have to wait and see what hap­pens on this one folks. Thanks for the heads up Philip.

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.

A blog net­work deliv­er­ing the lat­est news updates on a range of in-production block­buster movies.

A num­ber of web­sites (Hor­ror Movies, Movies Online) are report­ing that the Gears of War movie is being fast tracked into pro­duc­tion with­out a named direc­tor, with some spec­u­la­tion that this is as a result of pend­ing strike action in Hollywood.

If this is the case a direc­tor will more than likely be named in the com­ing month. Len Wise­man maybe?

A “reli­able stu­dio insider” revealed to IESB​.net that the direc­tor of both the Gears of War Movie and the remake of Escape from New York would be Len Wise­man.

Don’t recog­nise the name? This was the fel­low that cre­ated both of the Under­world fea­tures as well the fourth Die Hard film, Live Free or Die Hard. He is also the lucky hus­band of one Kate Beckinsale.

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