Sony & Avi Arad bringing us EVERQUEST!

Avi Arad is no longer the head honcho at Marvel after resigning in May last year, and he is now producing movies outside of the comic book medium. The first was the mega flop BRATZ: THE MOVIE, but now comes word from IGN of his biggest and most ambitious non-Marvel project to date. They say he is teaming up with Sony to produce EVERQUEST, a movie adaptation of the massive multiplayer online game with a 2009 or 2010 tentpole release date planned. It will probably be the latter, as this is not a pre-strike movie. Arad has hired Michael Gordon, one of the writers on 300 to pen the screenplay. It's believed Gordon pitched the idea of a film to Arad, who gave it the greenlight and got the financial backing needed from Sony.

EverQuest takes place in the fantastical world of Norrath -- a realm inhabited by 14 different races including humans, ogres, elves and animal-human hybrids -- and its moon Luclin. Other planes of reality also exist within the game's universe. Players create avatars that can slay monsters, embark on quests or acquire treasure.

LORD OF THE RINGS come to anyone's mind? So it sounds to me like this is a game which has no real storyline, so Gordon is going to be working from scratch to come up his own fantasy movie epic script. Which is fine and it's good that he won't have a rigid structure of a story and characters to work with but it also means the temptation will be their to copy Tolkien's work somewhat as his successful blueprint of a fantasy movie is the pinnacle of the genre. We have no confirmation on this news but IGN seem pretty confident about it. This movie then will be competing with WORLD OF WARCRAFT, another fantasy movie adaptation of a huge multiplayer online video game. Can any fantasy movie that deals with ogres, elves and the like feel fresh in the post-LOTR era?