The Gears of War franchise is one of the top-selling video game franchises in history. It’s been said for a while now, that a movie adaptation will happen. Most people expect a GOW movie to be a $200 million plus budget manifestation on screen. Today, we get news that those plans and expectations can be scratched.
Epic Games design director Cliff Bleszinski recently appeared at San Diego Comic-Con Cinema Blend about the long-gestating game-to-film adaptation, where he said that due to budget cuts by New Line Cinema the project is being retooled as a lower-budget sci-fi film along the lines of District 9.
This jives with recent updates that revealed the film’s $150 million budget had been slashed, original director Len Wiseman had walked away from it, and that the project had “gone back to the drawing board.”
Disctrict 9 is one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies. It was an original story, with great action and awesome looking special effects. It even got some Oscar nominations, including Best Picture in 2009. The cost of doing D9? Around some $30 million. How much did it make? About $210 worldwide. So can GOW be done D9 style (low budget), and be successful? Yes it can. As long as the story adaptation is strong, and the effects are well done like in D9, GOW can be successful. I believe it would make more money than D9, since it’s got a huge video game following and plenty of marketing strong points to exploit. And if going low-buget is what it takes for this film to be finally get done, then they should do it already.
What do you think? GOW going D9 style, a better option, than say, going Avatar style?
