Brett Ratner Confirms He's Directing 'God of War'

If he were around during the 1920s, Brett Ratner would probably have been rolling through your impoverished agrarian town selling snake oil. In the 21st century, he's a big time movie director and his own best (and worst) publicist. While Ratner's films have made a considerable amount of money - in fact, he's one of the more profitable directors of the past decade - his real talent is for selling Brett Ratner.

He's at his best with enormous, stupid action movies like Rush Hour. Nothing against Rush Hour, because the first one is pretty good, but they're all lousy stupid. And there's no harm in that. Where Ratner gets himself in trouble is when he changes things up. The only exception to that was the surprisingly strong and mellow Red Dragon, but that looked a lot like a Silence of the Lambs carbon copy more than its own entity. This is what I meant a couple weeks ago when I said, without a hint of sarcasm, that he'd be perfect to direct a Guitar Hero movie. And I can prove that to you by showing you the other extreme: You didn't want him directing X-Men: The Last Stand, and I doubt you want him directing God of War. The Rat is dead set on making that film, however, telling UGO that he's "waiting for the scripts and greenlights to come in" on a trio of projects, which includes the video game adaptation, plus a Hugh Hefner bio-pic and Beverly Hills Cop 4.

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Invoking the Wrath of Zeus: Brett Ratner to Direct 'God of War'?

I'm so glad I misread the article on Cinematical about Brett Ratner's new company, the creatively named Brett Ratner Brands. At first glance, I thought it was a cosmetics business. Turns out he's leaping from movie making to consulting, although it'd be refreshing to see what he could do with $200 million of foundation and blush; he sure as hell has trouble consistently turning that kind of money into good films.

But just because he's getting into the consultancy game, that doesn't mean he's turning his back on movies. I'm sorry to be the one who had to break that to you. Instead, Ratner appears to be attacking projects like the craft services table, telling Ad Age he might be working on a film adaptation of the video game, God of War. At least, that's what he hopes to do after he shoots Miley Cyrus' first non-Hannah Montana music video. Perhaps fittingly, the director most recently attached to the God of War project was our favorite spittoon, Uwe Boll. Cinematical also reports that the screenplay for God of War is finished and that Djimon Hounsou is among those being considered for the lead role, Kratos, a Greek soldier with a dark past who feels the Gods of Olympus have abandoned him. God of War has been named the greatest PS2 game ever by IGN, and it won the 2005 Game of the Year award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. Clearly, someone should make a movie out of this, and just as clearly, most people familiar with both parties would probably prefer that the someone in question not be Brett Ratner.

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