Joust to get game-to-film treatment

The most fascinating thing about the upcoming Joust movie isn't actually the movie itself. Rather, it's the implication that regardless of a game's content, every single franchise will one day be dragged kicking and screaming onto celluloid. Case in point: Anyone who remembers Joust will recall that it involves jousting on an ostrich (or occasionally an emu) against enemy knights on giant buzzards. Not that there's anything wrong with this. I mean, who wouldn't want to fly around on a giant ostrich? But maybe it's that no one who makes films actually recalls how silly video games used to be.

"We've updated the game into a commercial, tent pole movie," said the film's producer Michael Cerenzie in a recent statement. "[Screenwriter] Marc [Gottlieb]has done an amazing job in creating a tantalizing and filmic world based on the original game." Cerenzie fails to point out that the world of the game is, in fact, batshit insane and consists of a single screen with magical platforms floating over a pit of lava. Nothing else.

As if that wasn't enough, to coincide with the upcoming film, Steven Elliott Altman of DC and Dark Horse will be penning a graphic novel. No one seems to have yet pointed out that Joust has no actual story, unless collecting eggs for points is somehow considered a plotline.

CP Productions will be producing the film, which is said to have "Several A-list directors" interested. "Joust is an arcade game that's as old as Pac-Man and has global awareness," Cerenzie stated. "We took one element of the game and the brand itself and built a whole new world around it for the film." All of this despite the fact that not a single good video game adaptation has been made and the majority of the non-Gigli disasters of our time have resulted from such concepts.

Joust is slated for 2008.

Related links:
Play Joust for free
GameDaily's report on the film

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