Gears Grinds Onto The Big Screen

According to Variety magazine, New Line Cinema (of Lord of the Rings fame) has acquired the rights to Epic’s…epic…the Xbox 360 star Gears of War.

The Christmas time super-seller would require the same kind of expansive treatment as Middle Earth, but without tomes of lore and canon behind it, may leave the New Line crew with more options creatively and the prospect of filling in bits of the Gears of War storyline that aren’t as fleshed out in the game.

The rights were auctioned off with the inclusion of screenwriter Stuart Beattie’s expertise behind the scenes. Coming off of Collateraland Derailed, he submitted a 21-page tidbit for the Gears gig. He had the gameplay to work with, as well as an extensive background developed by Epic Games for the sole purpose of expanding into film and book form.

One tidbit that I found a little frightening, knowing how franchise-y and just plain bad video game movies and licensing can get, was the following:

Studio’s deal is with Epic, the game’s developer, which held onto all ancillary rights to the property when Microsoft signed on to publish the game. Though not announced yet, a sequel vidgame is assured. If development of both projects goes smoothly, New Line and Epic would surely love to see the film and a game sequel come out around the same time.

I’m not sure if that’s pure conjecture on the part of the Variety authors’, or whether this was pieced together out of comments from Epic and New Line. Either way, that’s a slippery slope to take careful watch of, where timing, money, and pressure leads to…crap. It would be a shame to see Gears reduced to a marketing sham.

Variety.com via Joystiq