Last night Microsoft held a Gears of War livestream to celebrate the forthcoming release of Gears of War 4. During the Paul Scheer-hosted event, The Coalition studio head Rod Fergusson announced that the Gears of War movie is moving ahead at Universal Studios.
Fans may remember that a Gears of War movie had originally been announced at New Line all the way back in 2007, shortly after the original game’s release. That version had Len Wiseman of Underworld fame attached as director, but it languished in development hell for years and eventually dropped off the map.
Now that the Gears of War franchise is owned by Microsoft, it seems like they’ve decided to move forward with a movie adaptation once again.
Fergusson said the movie was in pre-production and had Scott Stuber and Dylan Clark of Bluegrass Films attached as producers. Bluegrass Films is a relatively new production company responsible for Seth MacFarlane’s Ted movies and the Kevin Hart/Dwayne Johnson vehicle Central Intelligence. The movie doesn’t have a writer, director or cast attached as of yet.
Fergusson also said that the movie wouldn’t necessarily be “100 percent faithful to the game canon” because it’s a “different medium with a different audience,” though it would remain authentic to Gears of War.
Universal was also responsible for Warcraft which proved to a mixed bag, commercially and critically. Either way, they seem to be doubling down on videogame movies being the next big franchise gold mine.