Jake Gyllenhaal Named Prince of Persia, Vows to Lower Oil Prices

Hooray! Jake Gyllenhaal finally landed his own action franchise! After years of suggesting that he'd take over for Tobey Maguire in the Spider-Man series and after being rumored for everything from The Green Hornet to one of the Wonder Twins to even The Lone Ranger, Gyllenhaal has finally landed the coveted lead role in Jerry Bruckheimer's video game adaptation, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The Hollywood Reporter confirmed the news today, with Gyllenhaal playing Dastan, who joins forces with a beautiful princess (new Bond babe Gemma Arterton) to fight some nefarious nobleman who tries to get his hands on The Sands of Time, which can reverse time and allow whoever controls them to rule the world. The world! (Evil laughter) The casting of Gyllenhaal is not terribly surprising. He's been on the top of the heap of contenders for a few months now, although the addition of Arterton is not something I saw coming. I don't want to be politically incorrect, but neither one of them is particularly "of the region," shall we say. I guess Gyllenhaal looks enough like latter day depictions of the Prince, though. However, I fully expect the actor who plays the bad guy to be from the Middle East. It's what we do here in America. Mike Newell will direct and he'll bring with him the experience of running a tremendously huge film, having directed Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. And since it is Bruckheimer and it is a summer movie, don't expect this to be a leisurely drive wearing seatbelts. The action ought to be full-tilt here. The game was fun and challenging, and I'd be disappointed if the movie didn't live up to that expectation. And speaking of the summer, we mentioned yesterday that John Cusack will be in Roland Emmerich's 2012, which opens in July 2009. Prince of Persia is on the calendar for June 16, 2009. These blockbusters sure aren't leaving themselves much margin for error anymore, are they?

Comments

[Will]

Come on Jakey, your boy Christian Bale now has TWO franchises, and you're just now getting to your first?? Where is the work ethic?

I'm guessing that young Mr. G is feeling alot like Billy Zane did when he landed "The Phantom" back in 1996.

Slam Evil!

[Get The Big Picture]

I remember sitting across from McConaughey when he explained how 'Sahara' would be the beginning of his franchise. Actors actually think in those terms, which is a bit frightening.

[Orinn]

Video game based movies are always great and never barely tolerable even by fans, and franchises based on them are even better. Resident Evil in no way got progressively worse.