When it comes to successful rebirths of a video game francise, the most recent stellar performer must be Prince of Persia. It came a long way from its primitive beginnings on early Macintosh platforms. Even then it was still a great game. Ubisoft did a remarkable job with the original remake (The Sands of Time) and eventually put out one of the most successful video game trilogy’s of all time (Warrior Within and Two Thrones) — all three of which I throughly enjoyed.
It has come to light that Disney has teamed up with Jerry Bruckheimer to make a movie version of the first video game, Sands of Time. Let me first say at the moment I can’t recall a single good video-game-to-movie adaptation — and there have been some really bad ones of late *cough* DOOM *cough*. When you combine that with Disney’s propensity to mess good things up and Bruckheimer’s tendency for the overly dramatic *cough* Pearl Harbor *cough* Armageddon *cough* I don’t think I’ll ever get above “cautiously optimistic” for this one. However, it sounds like, they are following the Pirates of the Caribbean model where they loosely construct a new story around the original concept. With no casting revealed as yet, we have no idea if Johnny Depp will be cast to single handedly make the film good.
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Comments (4)
okay, as a person who loves bruckheimer, i have to say - as long as he doesnt use michael bay to direct, it should all be fine.
=) I agree — But unfortunately IMDB has Bay “rumored” to be at the helm. I’ve already basically written off Transformers because of Bay… Other than when they teamed up for Bad Boys and The Rock, the rest has been pretty bad.
And I saw a preview trailer for Traveler yesterday. I must say it looks good, but I’m not sure how they stretch it out into a season long show. It sounds more like a good mini-series to me. Its slated to record next week.
I know , but I think Michael bay with a good producer can make a great movie, I hope transformers is great since Spielberg is involved. They also have this guy Charlie clauson listed as the prince. Man I really hope that get a new unknown guy who is acutally persian or even middle eastern. I think John Abraham, Sendhil from Heroes and I know about this guy Kal parekh, Ive seen his film. Some Indie film my friend told me about. but he was good in it. If they wana go with a completely unknown guy. He needs to work out and get long hair, but then again the pics might be old. I think he fits the bill. check it out!
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2265118/
The problem I see is that I think they will have a tough sell trying to cast an unknown for that role because it still is a movie based on a video game. I think the studios seem to think they need a big name to get the “cross-over” audience. They think the name will attract those familiar with the game and the big name actor will attract everyone else. I think they are wrong in this case… PoP more than any other franchise I can think of has the potential for a great story and setting that should be able to sell itself.
Though alternatively, they could say that since they have a big name director/producer, that will be enough to carry the “cross-over” audience.
I just hope they focus on a good story. I think most video-game-to-movies suffer from pushing the video game image to the exclusion of everything else.