GEARS OF WAR in trouble
Boy it really hasn't been a good day for Len Wiseman.
IESB are reporting that the big budget adaptation of the uber successful video game GEARS OF WAR has gone the way of HALO, and looks to be scrapped by New Line, although nothing has been confirmed yet. The film was recently on the pre-strike memo but it now seems that budgetary concerns have put this film on hold and the studio now feel they might have been a little ambitious for their own good when they were putting this film together. There seems to be a big stigma around video game adaptations at the moment and they are not at the level of comic book adaptations quite yet. Where GHOST RIDER can be made and make a ton of money with it's Marvel stamp of approval ($228 million worldwide), films that are of equal quality but based on a video game like DOOM didn't ($55 million worldwide). This is probably why film adaptations of HALO, GEARS OF WAR, PRINCE OF PERSIA, METAL GEAR SOLID, SPY HUNTER and SPLINTER CELL aren't moving as quickly as you would expect with some of their killer stories. It's felt that spending a $100 million on those above could be money they will never see a return on. Shame because I thought Wiseman would have done a decent job with GEARS OF WAR and if their was ever a project that would suit his frantic, sugar-rush technique of film-making then this was surely it. A studio somewhere is going to have to take a risk on a video game and give it the big budget and summer release date just to get the ball rolling. Here's hoping PRINCE OF PERSIA doesn't fall into the same trap as those above and that they hire Gore Verbinski to weave his magic with a modern day SINBAD movie.