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Fear Effect, Hunter The Reckoning Movies Optioned

Posted by simoniker on from the next-up-daikatana dept.

Thanks to GameGossip for pointing to a Hollywood Reporter article revealing that German uber-producer Uwe Boll has optioned the rights to movies based on Fear Effect and Hunter: The Reckoning. Boll, who had previously claimed his planned Dungeon Siege film had "major crossover potential because of its unique blend of action and fantasy, on the order of Lord of the Rings", and is behind the House Of The Dead and Alone In The Dark movies, says Hunter: The Reckoning (originally from the White Wolf pen-and-paper RPG) will be a "hard, brutal, fast-paced ensemble film in the tradition of 'X-Men.'" Hunter will "shoot this summer in downtown Vancouver", with budgets for the 2 movies "ranging from $15 million-$25 million", but it's not known why Eidos' Fear Effect was optioned.

39 comments

  1. Please, sweet God, NOOOO by DesScorp · · Score: 2, Funny

    No more game based movies, I beg of you. We've already been given such Oscar-Quality films as Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, and, best of all, Super Mario Brothers.

    Please, let the madness stop here...

    --
    Life is hard, and the world is cruel
    1. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by Corfitz · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Game-based movies are not necessarily bad. The problem is when movie producers stick too firmly to the game instead of just using the world, the general mood and/or possibly the heroes/villains. Sometimes they are forgetting that a movie does not necessarily turn out a big hit just because the game is a hit - they need professional writers to work on the plot, the script and the dialogue to make a good movie.

      I could imagine some quite decent movies from, say, the White Wolf line of RPGs, but I do agree that some games might be difficult if not impossible to convert: I for one hope we'll never see a Duke Nukem movie.

    2. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by DrDoombender · · Score: 1

      You forgot Street Fighter as well. Personally, I hope they make a movie off of NBA2k3 or BMX XXX, I'm sure they could create a deeply driven movie on either of those games. Seriously, doesn't hollywood have some good movie ideas? The move obivious answer is apparently not.

    3. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by monkeyfinger · · Score: 1

      Resident Evil was bearable though.

    4. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by Pluvius · · Score: 1

      Game-based movies are not necessarily bad. The problem is when movie producers stick too firmly to the game instead of just using the world, the general mood and/or possibly the heroes/villains.

      Are you kidding? SMB barely stuck to the game at all, and it was one of the worst of the bunch. And the FF movie couldn't really stick to the game either (since each FF game has a different world), and it was only mediocre. (Granted, though, the FF movie was a rehash of FF7, but just different enough to where you couldn't say that it was following that game too closely.)

      I for one hope we'll never see a Duke Nukem movie.

      Already been done.

      Rob

    5. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by darkmayo · · Score: 1

      "The problem is when movie producers stick too firmly to the game instead of just using the world, the general mood and/or possibly the heroes/villains. Sometimes they are forgetting that a movie does not necessarily turn out a big hit just because the game is a hit "

      Name one game to movie film that followed the game it was based on closely... Maybe Tomb Raider?
      and that one was fairly successful.

      Supporting your view is Resident Evil where they had no characters from the orignal game and made it a percursor to the orignal Racoon City Incident. (IMO it worked despite its flaws)
      If you read Romero's orignal script he took the orignal characters and butchered them.

      Mario Bros wasn't about the game
      Neither was Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, House of the Dead. Out of all of those I would consider MK being the most successful out of them all.. which isn't saying much.

      --
      "I am a kernel in the linux army"
    6. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by hambonewilkins · · Score: 0

      You could also cite "They Live" since most of Duke's lines come from that movie.

      --

      God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
    7. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by Golias · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Seriously, doesn't hollywood have some good movie ideas?

      Disney's most successful non-Pixar, non-Miramax movie in the last 20 years was based on a theme park ride. A ride!

      Previews for "The Mask 2" feature yet another CGI dancing baby.

      They just released yet another gross-out romantic comedy starring Ben Stiller, on the heels of yet another sentimental romantic comedy starring Hugh Grant.

      So, yes. Hollywood is out of ideas.

      Special psychic advanced review: Both of the movies mentioned in this article will suck.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    8. Re:Please, sweet God, NOOOO by RevAaron · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hollywood forgot what it was like to make new movies. These days, they prefer to do remakes or sequels to movies made long, long ago. I imagine there are interesting and original scripts out there that would make good movies, but Hollywood ain't using them.

      They are in the business of making money, not providing good movies. There was a time when those two overlapped more, and perhaps could still today- but Hollywood doesn't seem to think so. They'd rather try to beat every dead horse they can find, capitalizing on nostalgia.

      --

      Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
  2. uh. by zenintrude · · Score: 1

    Didn't House of the Dead suck? This can't be good news...

    --
    - colin
  3. Noo... Noooooooooo.... by Chemical+Serenity · · Score: 1
    If there's any sort of god anywhere, he will NOT let another celluloid travesty be produced on the scale that the stinkfest 'House of the Dead' was.

    HotD has replaced Gigli and Ishtar as the Worst Movie Evar(tm). Not only would I recommend not seeing it, I'd probably encourage people to gouge their own eyes out if they were to be forced to see it. It'd probably hurt less.

    --
    "People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
  4. Suck is an understatement by Chemical+Serenity · · Score: 3, Funny
    Movie is to suck

    as

    House of the Dead is to gaping inescapable gravitic black hole event horizion ultra doom deathsuction.

    Although I might be understating the situation somewhat.

    --
    "People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
  5. Uwe Bowl - Why? by hambonewilkins · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Uwe Boll makes Paul W.S. Anderson (director of Resident Evil) look like a John McTiernana (Die Hard). How does this guy continue to get films made? Actually, how do either Uwe Boll or Paul W.S. Anderson continue to make films? Terrible. We can only hope, however, that future Uwe Boll films will continue to dig the grave of Jurgen Prochnow's career. A once proud actor reduced to "House of the Dead."

    --

    God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
  6. Boll Shit by illuminata · · Score: 1

    Hey, it's not all that bad. At least porn directors gain a little more respect each time a Uwe Boll movie comes out.

    Don't forget, he has the rights to Bloodrayne as well. I hope that made your day!

    --


    Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
    1. Re:Boll Shit by 2Flower · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure it's possible to make Bloodrayne's concept any stupider than it already is (skintight leather wearing nazi eating vampire vixen), so I think it's Uwe-safe.

      But Alone in the Dark, man... that's sad. It's bad enough the games themselves have tailspinned into crapdom after the atmospheric first outing, now we have to have a wire stunt kung fu shooting zombie action movie with the name as well?

      Why does Uwe have such a hardon for video game lisences when he doesn't actually bother making the movie anything like the game whatsoever? He could've stuck some other title on House of the Dead and nobody would have noticed.

    2. Re:Boll Shit by illuminata · · Score: 1

      Exactly. Who the hell would know about these licenses other than gamers? Money could have been saved by not purchasing them.

      My guess is that this douche actually thinks gamers want to see these movies because of their license, hoping to score better on DVD sales. If that's the case, he should at least shoot for some popular video game licenses.

      Or, maybe he's just trying to piss gamers off, something that he does very well.

      --


      Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
  7. Zombies gone Wild! by August_zero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    15-25 mil is pretty cheap for a film, really.

    All you need to do, is cast an attractive young European actress, get her to flash some mammary and you will turn a profit when all is said and done. Do these films ever make the top 10? No. But they don't need to, they just need a modest run in theaters and then a modest batch of sales in the video and DVD markets and profit is yours.

    Think of all the terrible slasher films of the 70s and beyond. Why do they still get made? Because they make a lot of money when you look at the big picture.

    --
    On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
    1. Re:Zombies gone Wild! by Golias · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Ture, but in the days of the old "B" pictures, some film-makers took the opportunity to make a guaranteed-success movie and used it to make a good work of art. Hollywood never cared much what the content of a B picture was, as long as had a thrilling title and came in under budget. Sometimes the result was garbage like the films lompooned on MST3k, but every once in a while, a director would realize: "Hey, I'm getting the chance to make a movie here. That's something 99% of the people who want to make movies never get. I should take full advantage of the opportunity." Whenever that happened, we got movies like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."

      I wish that the "under-$20 Million" wide distribution industry had more people that understand that. If they did, we would get a lot more flawed-yet-fun direct to video movies like "The Cube" and a lot fewer pieces of crap like "Resident Evil."

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    2. Re:Zombies gone Wild! by August_zero · · Score: 1

      You are one hundred percent correct.

      You need a lot of these movies to get made before the same thing happens with videogame films. Maybe around the time when Doom 7 and TombRaider 16 hit the silver screen, somebody will make the realization you mention and put out a classic. The problem really is the sample size, we only have about a dozen crappy game movies, when we have 100 surely one of them will be good.

      --
      On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
  8. still waiting... by ArmenTanzarian · · Score: 2, Funny

    I've been waiting for years for someone to pick up my script for "Tetris: The Musical"

    1. Re:still waiting... by Lord+Bitman · · Score: 1

      Sold!

      --
      -- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
  9. Screw Hunter by NedR · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Am I the only one who's sick of hunters of the undead? We've already got Buffy, Blade, Van Helsing, etc. Enough is enough, already. If they want to adapt something from White Wolf, why not make a script based on Vampire: The Masquerade? There's a lot of great storytelling potential in the way the whole vampire government is set up, though if the Dungeons and Dragons movie is any indication, Hollywood would just really screw it up.

    1. Re:Screw Hunter by GonzoDave · · Score: 1

      Too controversial. It would encourage kids to start throwing bricks off buildings

    2. Re:Screw Hunter by NedR · · Score: 1

      True dat. And if the right wing gets one peek of Vampire cosplayers hanging outside the movie theater, they're going to start this whole war on tabletop RPGs all over again.

    3. Re:Screw Hunter by jabberjaw · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you have not heard of Rod Ferrell.

    4. Re:Screw Hunter by NedR · · Score: 1

      Nope, I haven't. I must have missed out on the feeding frenzy with that one. I'm assuming at least some people started scapegoating the RPGs, mostly because of this:

      "Rod Ferrell was a troubled boy. He claims he was molested during a Black Mass that his grandfather made him attend. He was fascinated by role-playing games, graduating from "Dungeons and Dragons" to "Vampire: The Masquerade."

      The fact that the last part is considered relevant says a lot.

    5. Re:Screw Hunter by unclethursday · · Score: 1
      If they want to adapt something from White Wolf, why not make a script based on Vampire: The Masquerade?

      I think White Wolf would want a bigger budget, a good director and cast for Vampire or Werewolf, were they to be optioned for movies.

      Mage, OTOH, I could see being a TV show more than a movie, especially on HBO or Showtime, where they could be a bit more free to work than on network TV.

      though if the Dungeons and Dragons movie is any indication, Hollywood would just really screw it up.

      Too true.

    6. Re:Screw Hunter by dswensen · · Score: 4, Funny

      If they want to adapt something from White Wolf, why not make a script based on Vampire: The Masquerade?

      They already did, it was called Underworld. No, not precisely based off White Wolf's game, but enough so that WW filed a lawsuit. And the actors all look and behave like bad LARPers, so really, I think it works.

    7. Re:Screw Hunter by NedR · · Score: 1
      think White Wolf would want a bigger budget, a good director and cast for Vampire or Werewolf, were they to be optioned for movies.

      True. Getting down stuff like the blood magic alone would be killer expensive.

      Mage, OTOH, I could see being a TV show more than a movie, especially on HBO or Showtime, where they could be a bit more free to work than on network TV.

      Mage could work as a TV series. But as long as we're talking about other RPGs, a Call of Cthulu show would be great. Yeah, I know, it's not White Wolf, but I just had to throw that in.

    8. Re:Screw Hunter by NedR · · Score: 1

      I've seen Underworld. Not a horrible movie. Managed to keep me relatively entertained every once in a while. The makeup and animatronics weren't bad.

      Speaking as somebody who is somewhat familiar with Vampire: The Masquerade, Underwold wasn't really similar enough to be that lawsuit-worthy. Sure it had vampire clans, elder vampires, blood feuds, etc., but these have long been tired, uninspired staples of the genre (Anne Rice, anybody?). Besides which, the whole "secret war" thing was handled differently in Underworld. For one thing, in Vampire, they can actually keep it a secret. In Underworld, you had shootouts all over a public freakin' subway system, and werewolves running around yelling "Blood!"

      And yeah, the acting was pretty bad. The guy who played the traitor vampire in particular, was hamming it up more than a suicidal pig in a butcher shop.

    9. Re:Screw Hunter by Molt · · Score: 1

      I hate to disagree (Who am I kidding, I read Slashdot!), in most Vampire/Werewolf games they're meant to keep it a secret but it's all shoot-outs in the subway and werewolves running around everywhere yelling "Blood!".

      Note that this is mot a complaint about the White Wolf rulesystem or setting (Mage and Mummy are two of my favourite RPGs, I also enjoy most of the others.. not Changeling though, seemed slightly watery), just a comment on some of the LARP Vampire games I've seen.. and been involved in.

      I shall now go and atone for my sins, I may be gone some time.

      --
      404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
    10. Re:Screw Hunter by unclethursday · · Score: 1
      Call of Cthulu could work as a series on HBO or Showtime as well. Just have the main character go completely batty at the end of each season, and start off the new season with somone freshly thrown into the Mythos.

    11. Re:Screw Hunter by NedR · · Score: 1

      Huh. I don't have as much experience with Vampire as I do with D&D, but most of the games I've played involved lots of shootouts and werewolves in abandoned warehouses, that sort of thing. That's stealthier than shootouts in public areas, but admittedly, not by much.

  10. Fear Effect by cgenman · · Score: 1

    Fear Effect would make a great move. It basically was intended as a movie, in the vein of Resident Evil but involving a slow descent into madness and, more specifically, hell. Many great hells have been made on tiny budgets. Heck, many of the scenes in Fear Effect were stolen from those great movies. Backstabbing, Chinese Mafia, talking dolls, questionable sanity, death incarnate... What more could you want in a movie? Maybe Silent Hill would have been a better choice, but Fear Effect must have been a lot cheaper to option.

    Now Hunter: The Reckoning is a puzzler. Why pay for a name if nobody knows it? Of course, this is from a man whose highest achievement is an IMDB 6.5, and one has to wonder after seeing HOTD if his IQ matches. Maybe he has no clue that making a bad movie based on a game nobody has played will make no money. Of course, someone had to give him 20 million to make Alone in the Dark, so we'll see.

    --
    The ______ Agenda
  11. why Fear Effect? by Gorgo+the+Slow · · Score: 1

    "but it's not known why Eidos' Fear Effect was optioned." Gee, could it be because of the hot girl-on-girl action? Isn't that why people bought the game in the first place?

    1. Re:why Fear Effect? by simoniker · · Score: 1

      Please look closely at the website link on 'not known'. Ithangyou!

  12. Fear Effect 3... by May+Kasahara · · Score: 1

    I wonder if this news will affect the production on Fear Effect 3 (aka Fear Effect: Inferno)? For awhile, I heard it had been cancelled... though now that I look it up, it was just put "on hold" (link).

    1. Re:Fear Effect 3... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      kronos is shut down. no more fear effect 3.

  13. White Wolf may as well whore out the WoD by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

    one last time.

    They have a link to their press release href="http://www.white-wolf.com/huntermovie.html"> here.

    They just ended their World of Darkness last week.

    So why not make a little more money off of their fans before they forget about the WoD.

    LK

    --
    "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano