James Rolfe is one of my favorite Internet personalities, but maybe you know him better by his other name: The Angry Video Game Nerd. Back in 2006, Rolfe began reviewing old, crappy video games on YouTube and quickly became an online sensation. His reviews of 8-bit games like Top Gun, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Back to the Future and accessories such as the Power Glove have been viewed by millions of people.
In October 2011, Rolfe asked his huge Internet following for a favor. He wanted to make a movie based on his character, the Angry Video Game Nerd, and started an IndieGoGo page asking for $75,000. $325,000 later, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie was a go.
Co-written and directed by James Rolfe and Kevin Finn, the movie has finished shooting and is now being edited. As a reward to his fans, Rolfe cut a trailer. Watch it below. Read More »
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Briefly: Universal doesn’t want to let Asteroids float away, despite losing the interest of one-time potential director Roland Emmerich. The big-screen adaptation — I think here, the term “adaptation” has to be used very liberally — of the early ’80s arcade game has just picked up a new screenwriter. Jez Butterworth (the playwright who co-wrote Doug Liman’s Fair Game) has been hired to take up screenwriting duties in the wake of Matt Lopez and Evan Spiliotopoulos.
This news still doesn’t tell us much about what Universal plans to do with the film. The game doesn’t have a story — it’s just a lone ship trying to survive ever-thicker belts of asteroids, with the occasional incursion from a menacing UFO to complicate the situation. If it weren’t for Battleship, I’d say that the tabula rasa aspect of Asteroids is a great playground for a screenwriter to come up with just about any sci-fi plot they want, so long as there’s an asteroid or two in there. Battleship, also from Universal, demonstrated that things aren’t so easy. That film wasn’t a giant success, though it did well overseas, so perhaps that’ll push Universal to be more careful this time. All told, it’s a wash for me, from an interest perspective, until we know a lot more. [Variety]
Watching Sinister, I never would have guessed that the creators — director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cargill (aka Massawyrm at AICN) – would move on to tackle one of the most popular video game hits of the past twenty years.
The game series in question is Deus Ex, a set of first-person shooters that factors in many stealth and role-playing character elements as it drops players into a world characterized by giant corporations and extensive cybernetic body modification. The specific game in question is the latest release, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which acts as a prequel to the 2000 original and features the early days of human modification and the social, political, and economic changes that the technology threatens to push forward. Read More »
Posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2012 by Angie Han
Tom Hardy‘s all set to enter the world of Tom Clancy, but it’s not in the way we previously suspected. A couple of months back, we got word that Paramount wanted the Dark Knight Rises actor to lead the Christopher McQuarrie-directed Without Remorse. Instead, he’s signed on for the Ubisoft video game adaptation Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, in the lead role.
Meanwhile, Splinter Cell is making some progress on the other side of the camera as well. Eric Singer, who penned Tom Tykwer’s The International, has just been tapped to write the script. More details after the jump.
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Need for Speed, the adaptation of the popular EA gaming franchise, is already racings toward its 2014 release date. Directed by Scott Waugh and written by George Gatins, the film recently grabbed itself a lead in Breaking Bad actor Aaron Paul. Next up, Imogen Poots (Fright Night) was cast and now Dominic Cooper, best known for his role in Captain America: The First Avenger, has joined the team. Along with Cooper’s casting comes details of how all those pieces fit together. Read about it after the jump. Read More »
John Cusack is on a roll this week at the American Film Market, and he’s bringing Roger Avary (along for the ride. The writer/director has had his share of trouble in the last few years thanks to a DUI-related vehicular manslaughter conviction, but he’s getting back in the news in a positive way with a couple new projects.
The first is Airspace, written by Briana Hartman (Brother’s Keeper), in which Avary would direct Cusack as a charter pilot who is en route home but “must escape a sudden attack by a heavily armed MiG fighter jet after finding a mysterious briefcase in his plane.” It’s described in shorthand as “Duel in the sky,” referencing Steven Spielberg’s early thriller. Avary is polishing the script, says Variety.
And then there’s an old Avary project that has been revived: the film adaptation of the classic Castle Wolfenstein video games, which he’ll write and direct. Read More »
Video games and movies have never had a happy marriage. Good games rarely become good movies and good movies rarely become good games. But there had to be a sweet spot, and Disney has found it. That sweet spot is Wreck-It Ralph, a movie set in the world of video games, but not bound by any one in particular. It’s a smart, fun, entertaining film for the whole family that constantly surprises and provides laughs while always focusing on its clever, heartwarming story. And while a knowledge of Sega, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft isn’t essential, it surely enhances the journey of a would-be hero figuring out who he really is… as he ventures through a candy themed racing game. It’s the best animated Disney movie of the year and one of the best video game movies of all time.
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Here’s some great news for the legions and legions of Mass Effect fans out there. Screenwriter Morgan Davis Foehl has been hired to take a new pass at a script for the popular video game turned big budget film. His hiring marks the first significant movement on the project since 2010 when Legendary Pictures purchased the rights to the franchise, which centers on a 22nd century military commander who leads a human army against a race of alien robots who selectively wipe out a galaxy every 50,000 years.
Davis-Foehl has yet to have a script produced, but he had one on the 2009 Black List, and he wrote Alien Sleeper Cell and worked on Rescue Me as well as some Happy Madison films. He’s a massive Mass Effect fan and producers liked his take after, obviously, deciding not to move forward with the original script written by Mark Protosevich. Read more after the jump. Read More »
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