'Gears of War' Director Wants a Trilogy

Video game movies could become the new comic book movies. Whether or not they can build and sustain that kind of audience is the real test, but apparently, studios are trying to predict the trend; not 48 hours ago, we wrote about Capcom budgeting Lost Planet in the prohibitively expensive $150 million - $200 million range. I think you have more leeway with Gears of War, and Len Wiseman, the Underworld director, tells Bloody Disgusting that he conceives the project as a trilogy. "The hope is that we're wanting to do a three movies and really cover the bases on everything. Basically a harder edged Lord Of The Rings." Interestingly enough, Wiseman claims he was not much of a video game fan before Live Free or Die Hard, which sparked his interest in Gears of War:

“I suck at video games, it just takes me too long and I can’t get the coordination of ‘em. When I was on [Live Free Or] Die Hard, I had to choose some video game for the background in a scene with Kevin Smith. I was shown about a dozen games and told to ‘Choose one to be in the background’ and I said ‘this one looks really, really cool whatever it is,’ and it was Gears Of War. I just really connected with it; the design of it the world, the whole thing. So I actually brought an Xbox 360 to start researching what it was.”

There has never been a video game movie that has helped the genre reach a tipping point. In comic book movies it wasn't Superman or even the first Batman. It was Spider-Man. People loved it. It set records. Critics thought it was bold and innovative. And look at the genre now: Last year, one-fifth of the top 20 was comic book movies, earning $2.15 billion worldwide. When someone finally gets the video game movie right, then we'll see a torrent of these things. I suspect Gears of War has a shot, although I wouldn't extend Wiseman that much credit at this point in his career.

Comments

[Lengthy Johnson]

Well, a lot of CGI-heavy films look like computer games these days, so why not?

I am getting throrughly fed up with comic book films.

And, Len, if you can't say it with one film, you won't be able to say it with three either.

[Orinn]

I dream of the day they make a video game movie right, they have come a long way since "super mario brothers" the movie.
In the end as much as I dream I dont know how any producer in there right mind thinks throwing 200mil at an unproven genre will turn a profit.
200mil at any movie will have a very hard time turning a profit.