Big-screen video game adaptations is the up-and-coming trend, behind comic book movies (which critics are getting sick of, but too bad! The Dark Knight Rises and The Man of Steel will keep that winch turning for a long time), and the whole “let’s remake everything from the 80’s!” thing. There are plenty of potential franchises on their way, and now we can add the Just Cause game series to the list.
THR reports that Bryan Edward Hill has been brought aboard by producers Adrian Askarieh and Eric Eisner to rewrite the existing adaptation of Square Enix’s hit series, which is currently titled Just Cause: Scorpio Rising. The plot? Something about “a black ops agent codenamed the Scorpion who enters a guerilla war to overthrow a dictator. The movie will focus on the origin of the Scorpion, aka Rico Rodriguez.” The second game in the series, Just Cause 2, was released in 2010, sold more than 3.5 million copies, and apparently isn’t the most realistic thing ever created.
The whole thing is being packaged and developed by Askarieh and Eisner’s production companies, Prime Universe Productions and Double E Pictures, respectively, before approaching studios and financial backers. Scribe Hill will be rewriting a first draft by Touristas writer Michael Ross, and judging by Hill’s deep background in comics (as a co-writer of a Witchblade mini-series and co-creator of Image Comics’ 7 Days From Hell), this title is firmly in his wheelhouse.
It is theoretically possible to make a solid, smart, entertaining video game movie… it’s just that no one has managed to pull it off yet. I can’t see this one being any more or less flawed, boring or pointless than Max Payne, Doom, Hitman or the Resident Evil movies, and despite the hero’s clearly-Latino name/heritage, I expect the thoroughly-Anglo Channing Tatum will pop up on a potential cast list eventually.
Are you a fan of the Just Cause series? Should Hollywood just make Duke Nukem with Arnold and stop screwing around already?