Prince of Persia was filmed in 2D and will be presented in 2D, there are no plans to digitally adapt it into 3D, a process many disagree with.

Thanks Nick.

Prince of Persia movie posters

Click for high resolution version:

Gemma Arterton minus text

Ben Kingsley

Expect a Ben Kingsley poster shortly, not our first viewing, but this one is particularly menacing! Scoop via Coming Soon.

More of Jake as Prince

The EW also have a new shot of one startled looking Jake Gyllenhaal,

Thanks Suzy, Jerry, Javier and Ivan!

The portrayal of the Prince in the movie seems to be an interesting combination of previous games, as one reader points out — the movie is entitled ‘Sands of Time’ — in the first look video we see Jake dressed in a white robe — similar to the 1989 prince and we also see clips of him donned up in the Warrior Within prince outfit. And now in this poster there is a hint of the Two Thrones character portrayal.

Fans looking for a first look at the poster art for the upcoming, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” will have to head to the movie theater to see it, though it won’t be in the place they might expect.

Mega-Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has hidden the poster inside his latest film, “Confessions of a Shopaholic”, appearing as a Times Square advertisement about halfway into the film. It joins posters for a number of other Bruckheimer productions, including the upcoming “G-Force”, though “Persia” is unique in that it marks the first time the films’ artwork has been seen anywhere.

Prominently featured on the poster is lead actor Jake Gyllenhaal in full-costume as Prince Dastan.

“The new Prince of Persia film is a collaboration between [Prince of Persia creator] Jordan Mechner and Disney,” it said. “Ubisoft has no involvement.”

This also means that the recent acquisition of Hybride Technology by Ubisoft is completely unrelated to the Prince of Persia movie, some of us had hoped that the effects studio behind 300 would soon be coming aboard the project — though this latest news does put down these rumors, a further comment is encouraging:

“Hybride and Ubisoft will work together to share technology and develop tools in order to optimize the creation of both video games and visual effects. Ultimately, we expect to use the partnership to leverage our brands in the movie industry.”

In the fantasy adventure, Gyllenhaal will play Dastan, a young prince in sixth century Persia who must join forces with Tamina (Arterton), a feisty and exotic princess, to prevent a villainous nobleman from possessing the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world.

Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard, Jordan Mechner and Boaz Yakin wrote the script, which is based on the many games created by Jordan Mechner.

Bruckheimer is producing, while Mike Stenson, Chad Oman and Patrick McCormick are exec producing.

Production is set to start in July.

(Pics thanks to Gemma-Arterton.net)

Choice of Morocco as a shooting location will be a boost for the North African country’s film biz.

[…]

“Producers are always looking for cheap places to shoot and Morocco is one of them,” said Dune Films’ Jimmy Abounouom, who is repping the Moroccan shoot for Disney.

Dune execs previously handled the Moroccan shoots of Tom Hanks starrer “Charlie Wilson’s War” and Kimberly Peirce’s “Stop-Loss.”

“Prince of Persia” will also lens in Blighty’s Pinewood Shepperton studios. Project is in pre-production. Abounouom told Variety he expects the Moroccan section of the shoot to start in mid-June, labor wrangles notwithstanding.

Thanks to Nettle (Caitie)

There’s been buzz about the Prince of Persia movie. Who’s producing? Who’s directing?

Jerry Bruckheimer is producing for Walt Disney Pictures. Mike Newell [ Donnie Brasco, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire] is the director.

What’s it like working with Jerry Bruckheimer?

I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, but he is extremely focused, detail-oriented and completely unflappable. Things that most people might consider a crisis — hurricanes, strikes, whatever — he handles very calmly and somehow it all works out. I can see why the studios feel confident entrusting him with hundreds of millions of dollars. If he’s making the movie, everything’s gonna be OK.

Is Ubisoft involved or does your license agreement allow you to do this separately?

They’re separate deals. Ubisoft has the videogame rights to Prince of Persia and Disney has the film rights.

How long has the script been in development?

I wrote the first draft and several revisions over a period of about a year and a half. Two more years of development followed, in which additional revisions were done by (in this order): Jeff Nachmanoff, Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard.

That sounds like a crazy number of writers, but the original screenplay structure, plot and characters have survived the whole process pretty much intact.

It’s still very much the same movie John August and I pitched to Disney and Bruckheimer back in 2004 — it’s been streamlined in certain ways, souped up in others. It’s a good, solid story and I think it’ll be very satisfying on screen.

What are the differences between writing for a video game and writing for a film? How closely does the movie storyline correspond to the games?

If you summarize the movie in one sentence, it sounds identical to the first Sands of Time videogame, but scene by scene it’s actually completely different. It has to be, because games and film are such different mediums.

On the surface they’re deceptively similar — you can watch five minutes of an action-adventure videogame and think “this could be a movie,” or vice-versa — but structurally the requirements are totally different.

Here’s one example: The game kicks off with a cataclysm that basically destroys the world and turns all living creatures except for the three main characters into raging, murderous sand monsters. That was a great setup for the gameplay we had, which was “acrobatic Persian survival horror.”

But if you put that setup in a film, it would be a “B” movie, and that’s not the kind of movie Prince of Persia should be. Our model is classic epic, swashbuckling action-adventure movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Zorro, and Thief of Baghdad, with humor and romance and full of memorable characters. You can’t get there if you turn everybody into sand monsters on page fifteen.

I hope Sands of Time game fans will see the movie with an open mind and judge it based on the experience it creates for them, not by the standard of how closely it matches the 2003 video game. The game still exists and you can still have the experience of playing it. We’re not destroying it by making the movie. We’re creating something new that has to stand on its own, just as the game did.

Will there be a game title that goes along with the movie? Are there any new games in the works separate from the movie?

Sorry, but I can’t answer that question!

How close is the movie to starting filming and how does the strike affect it?

The movie is in pre-production. At this moment there’s no way to know how long the writers’ strike will last, or if the directors’ and actors’ guilds will strike as well. It’s a very insecure time for the whole industry.

A lot of big movies that were set to go, now aren’t. I was really hoping that Mike Newell would be the one to direct this movie and I was ecstatic when he agreed, but it was bittersweet because I only had about 24 hours to rejoice before the writers’ strike began.

I support my guild and the writers’ cause, so until the strike is resolved I can’t meet with Newell and the Bruckheimer execs or contribute further to the development of the movie. It’s frustrating because I’ve been dreaming of a Prince of Persia movie, basically, for 20 years, and now at this key moment when the project has finally found the right director and he’s brimming with enthusiasm and excitement, I can’t even meet with him.

The important points to take from the interview:

• Nobody has been cast
• The movie may become a franchise
• Filming is set to start in June, if the writer’s strikes get resolved.

Some quotes:

Jerry Bruckheimer: We hired a very interesting director – Mike Newell – who did one of the Harry Potter’s and also did Donnie Brasco and he’s a very inventive, ingenious director and I think he’s going to bring something really special to it. […]

Q: Is this one of these properties that you envision the possibility of a franchise […]?

Jerry Bruckheimer: Yes. It’s a big production and if they work it’s another character that you can take on other adventures.

Q: Do you have any casting on it?

Jerry Bruckheimer: Not yet.