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John Woo to Direct Spy Hunter Movie?
shadowcabbit writes "Gameforms is reporting that director John Woo, who previously optioned Nintendo's Metroid series of games for the silver screen, is in negotiations with Universal to direct the 2005 film adaptation of Spy Hunter. The film, which will star Dwayne Johnson (aka The Rock), has been in the planning stages since 2001, but has not yet begun production."
What I want to see is a live-action movie based on Bump N' Jump. That would be great.
I used to die on purpose just so I could hear the great music in that game. Sometimes I would wait for when I got a powerup, but usually I just liked driving real fast listining to the cool "spy" music that played for like 30 seconds. Needless to say I wasn't leader of the cool club back then either.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
....compared to the James Bond franchise. The Spy Hunter game itself was influenced by Bond's gadget filled cars, so wouldn't this movie, in effect, be redundant?
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
I have a theory that John Woo shoots every movie at 60fps and just speeds up the ten minutes he doesn't want in slow motion.
Now, I havent played the remakes - but I remember the arcadegame, the c64 port and especially the amiga port with fondness.
Ramming motorcycles with your card, avoiding those annoying wheel cutters and tasting sidewinder missiles for bumping off innocents.
What we need now though; as I discussed with my brother the other day, is a new carmageddonish game - preferably set in a madmax/falloutish world with excellent multiplay and a great singleplayer story rich mode.
The shooter/car-carnage ratio is dangerously off scale.. gta is fun - but the softwarehouses keep churning out FPS'ers - We need weapons mounted on custom job-vehicles and fun bump'n run action..
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
You gotta be fucking kidding me. the game that was inspired by the cars in James Bond movies, is now inspiring a movie series?
While, looks like this is the end of the line for John Woo. This is about as low as one can stoop. Sorry if you disagree, but he has had a hand in producing some of the worst crap to ever be spattered on the silver screen. If you don't believe me, watch MI:2 and try not to wince. It the old rip-off-the-latex-mask-disguise device not once, but three times. Even the most lame Scooby Doo mystery managed to use this gag only once, and the audience wasn't asked to take Scooby Doo seriously.
I look forward to the day when John Woo's next project is "Job Hunter".
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I still can't figure out how he keeps getting work.. He's all explosion and nothing else.. his best movie was Face-Off and even that had the most implausible story.
MABASPLOOM!
You just had to go and open your mouth, didn't you?! Thanks.
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
Cue the Peter Gunn Theme Song!!
He's just as good as Arnold and about 10x better than Vin Diesel.
His best movie was probably "The Killer", followed closely by "Hard Boiled."
All of his Hong Kong movies pwn, All of his Hollywood movies are t3h suck.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Honestly, the game was a 2-d top scroller that had no more plot than dodge, dodge, fire. He must be planning an exploding boathouse scene though, I'm sure of that: Spyhunters car speeds towards the boathouse. Helecopter hovers overhead raining down a birrage of bombs. The car zooms into the boathouse, Spyhunter leaps from car to boat. Bombs crash through the roof, and the boat is blown out into the river by the fire and shockwave. Cheers to turning one of the most simple videogames into a 100million dollar budgeted dud. And thanks for ruining one of PKD's best story's
Basically, the reason why Hollywood is looking at a Spy Hunter movie is because the 3D, modern Spy Hunter game is so much fun.
a sh/spyhunter/
The original Spy Hunter was a favorite of mine, but would hardly inspire a movie. It was a top-down (third-person perspective) sprite-based scrolling shooter game, designed to be hard enough that it would pull in a respectable amount of coins in an arcade.
The 3D Spy Hunter game, available for the major game console systems, plays differently and I think it is huge fun. It's a "second-person" shooter: like a first-person game, but you can see yourself (i.e., the car) to make it easier to figure out if you are clearing obstacles. Once you learn the game, you usually don't die; you are racing the clock and trying to find secrets in the various levels more than trying to survive. You have lots of weapons, an unrealistic amount of them, and it's surprising how I never seem to get tired of locking missiles onto bad guys and lighting them up. The music is also excellent in this game, enough so that I want to get Ogg Vorbis files of the music so I can listen to it when I'm not playing the game.
The most recent Spy Hunter game, Spy Hunter 2, is different again. Your car is much more fragile now, and survival is a major problem. Your turbo boost doesn't recharge, you have to find and collect powerups to recharge it. And "boss" enemies are now a major part of the game. While I found the first one to be addictively playable, the second one frustrates me, and frustration isn't fun. Oh, and just in case you are a 12-year-old boy, there is now a female character with lots of polygons on her chest, moving in stiff, unrealistic ways as she walks and talks. Woo hoo! Who needs game play! And the music isn't nearly as interesting as in the first one.
If you haven't tried the Spy Hunter console game, I recommend you do so. It's a fun hybrid of a first-person shooter and a car racing game, retaining the best elements of each.
I'd be extremely happy if they ever release a "Spy Hunter 1.5" with the original game engine, just with new levels to play.
http://www.spyhunter.midway.com/futuretense_cs/fl
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I never pictured the driver of the Spy Hunter car as a big, hulking guy with muscles. Why not somebody like Clive Owen? (Did BMW build the G-6155 Interceptor?)
Yeah, I know, because The Rock helps sell tickets when he is in an action movie. With The Rock on board the project, you don't need to worry about making an actual movie; you can string together a bunch of explosions and add The Rock and it will sell.
I love the Spy Hunter video game but I don't know if the movie will be any good. Odds are against it, alas.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I hope they don't make it like I played Spy Hunter:
1. Tractor-trailer drops off car
2. Drive for a couple minutes, shoot/run cars off of the road
3. Crash and burn
4. Wait for tractor-trailer to drop off another car
5. Repeat 2-4 until the movie's over.
It'll be a plotless version of Groundhog Day.
How will John Woo work a shot of flying doves into this movie?
Becuase this isn't going to be a spy movie, it is to be a movie with lots of slowmotion, explosions and at least one totaly out of place shot of flying doves.
The Killer is one of my all-time favourites and Hard Boiled is great. Any of his Hong Kong work is much better than the crap he's been making for Hollywood.
I seems to remember a movie called the Transporter that was pretty much all that spy hunter could & should be. It had bikes, boats, cars, and guns & gadgets...what else do you need to represent a video game which comprised of a vehicle knocking other vehicles off the screen using brute force & gimmic gadgets. We don't need a rehash of a pointless game that was about nothing more than destroying stuff. Good lord the next thing you know they'll do a movie about a martial arts tournament that decides the fate of the world...oh wait...that was mortal combat!
In reply to the Tetris comments...
Gabe and Tycho have already suggested this, only they initially thought of Jerry Bruckheimer.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Aaaahh, let me guess... you've never seen Johnson act in anything except maybe little snippets of wrestling you like to make fun of so you can feel superior.
For action parts, Dwayne's a great actor. I mean, hell, if people can spend a decade enjoying Arnold Schwarzenegger in movies, I'm sure they can enjoy an action hero with actual talent.
Happy people make bad consumers.
Act 1
(The Rock steps into his car within the trailer of a semi. The rear door drops down and drags behind the truck in a spray of sparks. The car goes flying backwards - optionally spinning around in theoretically impossible fashion - and then takes off.)Scene 1
Scene 2
(The Rock drives the car down a road. Don't ask what road. The background is mostly green. He shoots some bad guys with spikes on their hubcaps and curses whenever he bumps into a motorcycle.)Scene 3
(Same as Scene 2... only the background is more orange-brown-ish.)Scene 4
(Same as Scene 3... only the background is more grey-ish.)etc...
Announcer Guy: He's a superagent who plays by his own rules...
Police Captain: You can't take on a 90 story building full of enemy spies by yourself!
Vin Deisel: Sorry chief, I play by my own rules.
[Turns, winks.]
Announcer Guy: He's a wise-cracking Negro in the wrong place at the wrong time...
[The Heroes run through a door way and stop cold. Slow motion pan of a roomful of guys with machine guns pointed at them.]
Chris Rock: Daaaamn... I haven't seen this many weapons since the last time I was over at Jay Z's house.
Announcer Guy: This summer, Vin Deisel and Chris Rock star in Elevator Action!
Hot Chick: Going... down?
[Things blow up, there is a Bad Ass slow motion kung-fu scene on top of an elevator, bad guys plummet to their deaths.]
Vin Deisel: Now that's what I call getting the shaft.
Chris Rock: Yeah, booooy!
[This film is not yet rated.]
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
Yup... you guessed it... They will be directing the hit block buster action adventure thriller version of Q-bert based on the classic 80's arcade game!
Fucking Sweet!
Word is, Ben Affleck will play Coily!
A lot of Hollywood directors took inspiration from him, but nobody has managed to copy his formula.
I actually thoroughly enjoyed The Corruptor, a Hollywood movie which definitely has elements of what you describe as "the Woo style" (not to mention Chow Yun-Fat). It's nothing earth shattering, but it's a damn solid action movie.