Variety are reporting that movie studio Legendary Pictures will be co-financing and co-producing the Gears of War movie adaptation, to be directed by Len Wiseman.

It’s the first New Line project that Legendary has signed onto since the mini-major was folded into Warner Bros. earlier this year. Legendary has a deal to co-finance and co-produce at WB.

“Gears of War” has been set up at New Line since early last year with Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey producing through their Temple Hill banner. “Gears” lead designer Cliff Bleszinski is exec producing and consulting for developer Epic, which owns the rights.

Len Wiseman is directing with Chris Morgan writing the script. First draft was penned by Stuart Beattie.

Variety are reporting that Len Wiseman (Underworld) shall be taking the helm on the Gears of War movie. We reported this rumor in August last year. Chris Morgan (Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) is also writing a new draft based on Stuart Beattie’s treatment:

Len Wiseman is suiting up to direct New Line’s “Gears of War,” based on Microsoft and Epic Games’ hit vidgame.

Chris Morgan is penning a new draft of the actioner that Stuart Beattie originally tackled. Scribe’s credits include Universal’s upcoming “Wanted” and “The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift.”

Fanboys have been speculating for nearly a year that Wiseman may helm the project; the game was featured in his most recent pic, “Live Free or Die Hard.” But talks with New Line took place only over the last several months.

Wiseman will develop the story with Morgan.

I think the general consensus, from when Wiseman was previously rumored, was that he is a bad choice of director. Bringing in Chris Morgan, someone that has worked on Fast and the Furious 3 and little that is critically acclaimed, suggests that the creative minds behind this are wanting to create an action-filled no brainer, with the majority of thought going into cool-looking CG action sequences rather than storyline and plot arcs. This news could potentially spell out doom (no pun intended) for the movie, condemning it to the world of low brow over the top action flicks. Gears surely deserves better.

At last, we have some big juicy news to get our hungry chainsaws plunged into. Wyck Godfrey, (producer of Eragon, AVP, I Robot), has spoken out about the Gears adaptation for the big screen:

“We’ve got our script on and a director we’re about to attach. We’ll hopefully make [the Gears of War movie] early next year for the summer of 2010.”

Thanks Elias, Coming Soon

… in case you somehow missed it, which I can scarcely believe.

The debut trailer:

The announcement:

CliffyB has been talking to the media about the status of the Gears of War movie again, which is something we are always very happy to see. The good news? The film is very much alive (despite the writers strikes it seems), so he tells Cineplex Entertainment:

“We are currently at the point where we have had a couple drafts of the script and now we are talking to different directors and trying to feel out who would be the best fit for it,”

“It has been a really fascinating process to learn how Hollywood works. [...] I just hope that whatever comes out of this is compelling entertainment and is very representative of the ‘Gears of War’ universe.”

Thanks Damien for sending this one in.

Not related to the gears of war movie directly, however it is of interest to the readers of this blog, so I am mentioning it here.

Jerry O’Flaherty, art director for the Gears of War video game, will be undertaking the challenge of directing Warner Bros’ CG-animated Thundercats adaptation - so reports Variety.

I think I would prefer a live action Thundercats, maybe it’s just the thoughts of who could pull off the Cheetara role, whilst looking sexy and not ruining their career.

Are many people interested in this movie?

Thanks to John again for the heads up!

GamePro were given the opportunity to talk with Gears of War movie writer Stuart Beattie, in an exclusive interview. Here are some choice extracts from the informative article:

“The perception of videogames in Hollywood is changing slowly. Hollywood likes to do what’s proven. They’ve already proved that books work, and plays can work, and recently that comic books can work. But they’ve yet to have a film be as successful as say Spider-Man, that’s based on a videogame. 

[...] While there are more and more videogame movies being made because there are more and more videogames being made, there still hasn’t been that one that has hit it out of the park yet. At the moment, I would say the perception of videogame movies in Hollywood is: they are interested, they’re intrigued, but they’re still not completely sure if it can actually work.”

As for the use of a 300-esque green screen approach,

“[...] That film was shot completely on green screen, which is amazing when you actually see the film. It’s probably how we’re going to do Gears of War.”

[Referring to GOW] It’s a planet and it’s a bubble and it’s a building. It’s an epic sci-fi war and an enormous film. To get it made at all, the only way to make it for a price is to be on a soundstage. But the game also has that look, which is really interesting, so I think it will dovetail really nicely.“

Beattie also hopes that the film will be “extremely collaborative“.

As to our previous story, wherein we reported that the movie could be on hold, we received this very encouraging E-mail,

GEARS OF WAR is not stalled in any way, shape, or form. We are simply in the process of finding the right director. This is always a delicate and difficult task, and with multiple looming strikes, even more so. Be patient, stay tuned, news will come.

The IESB are reporting that Len Wiseman is no longer involved with the Escape from New York remake, which at first glance would imply that he plans to work on GoW. However, through IESB’s contacts, it is now rumored that he is not involved in the video game adaptation either, and, more alarmingly, that New Line Cinema might pull out altogether:

Wiseman is also off the video game adaptation and New Line Cinema will most likely not move forward with the film at all. Our source is saying that the studio has concerns with ballooning budget of the film.

We’ll have to wait and see what happens on this one folks. Thanks for the heads up Philip.