Scott Derrickson and screenwriter C. Robert Cargill are handling the adaptation of Square Enix and Eidos-Montréal critically acclaimed video game Deus Ex: Human Revolution. Read some of their ideas below from their chat with Crave Online.
Are they focusing on the original Dues Ex game or Human Revolution. C. Robert Cargill: Human Revolution. The philosophy of their approach to the adaptation. C. Robert Cargill: Yeah. Yeah, the chief philosophy is we’re not making a video game movie, we’re making a cyberpunk movie. We’ve taken a look at what’s worked in video games and what hasn’t, and really what we’ve broken down is what we think the audience really wants, [what] the audience that loves Deus Ex is going to want to see out of a Deus Ex movie. And it’s not a rehashing of the game. What they want to see is, they want to see elements of the game that they love, but they want to see things that they hadn’t quite seen in the game, that the game didn’t allow them to see. So it’s really allowed us to expand upon the things that happened in the game, and the game has such a great cinematic story to begin with that those elements are very easy to extract. But really, at its core, we just keep telling each other, “We’re not making a video game movie, we’re making a cyberpunk movie.” And Scott and I are such big cyberpunk fans from way back in the day that that just really charges us up. Because that’s what’s so great about Deus Ex to begin with, is it really gets cyberpunk. I Eidos Montreal really understood the nature of cyberpunk and made “the” cyberpunk game, and it is just fantastic, and we’ve just had a great time adapting it. What films are they looking at as inspiration or 'molds' for Deus Ex. C. Robert Cargill: We’re trying to break out, and really, the mold for the movies that we’re looking at… We’re looking at movies like District 9 and Looper, and Inception. Those are the molds of what we’ve been doing. It’s… Let’s push this and do something new with concepts people love, but tell a story that they’ve never seen before, that just melts their brain. And that is just hyperkinetic and smart and just hits all the right buttons that genre audiences want to see. That’s what we’ve gunned for. We haven’t tried to build it around Johnny Mnemonic or New Rose Hotel... On video games adaptations as a whole and which ones have worked. C. Robert Cargill: Mortal Kombat. I think Mortal Kombat is about as good a video game movie as anyone’s made, because it captures the essence of what the game was and delivers what the audience wanted out of it, but it’s still not a great movie. I think the first Resident Evil is also a solid adaptation, in that it’s a great Friday night, two in the morning movie. Where, if you pop that movie in, that’s a cool, fun little film. But I really feel like those are the only two that come close to really being close… Scott Derrickson: …and the big difference being, they work because they did the adaptation – I would agree with that, by the way, that both of those are decent… they’re not great, but they’re decent – but they’re also based on games that did not have lofty ambitions. The games didn’t have big ideas in them. Deus Ex… Our interest in doing this has to do with the grand ambition of that game. There are big ideas in that game. There some deep characters in that game. There is sci-fi technology that we haven’t seen in that game. So those are the elements that make for fresh cyberpunk storytelling. So I think that the coming of age of video game movies is going to be a combination a few factors. I think that it’s going to be, one, the growing intelligence and maturity of games themselves. That’s certainly the case with Deus Ex. There's much more at the source as the duo discuss the entire genre of cyberpunk and such films as Johnny Mnemoic, The Matrix and Blade Runner. Other video game adaptations in the works include:
World of Warcraft--Duncan Jones to direct, Johnny Depp rumored to star
Need for Speed -- Scott Waugh to direct, Aaron Paul, Dominic Cooper, Imogen Poots and Michael Keaton to star
Mortal Kombat: Legacy 2 -- Kevin Tancharoen to direct, Casper Van Dien, Brian Tee, Cary Tagawa to star
Splinter Cell -- Tom Hardy to star
Assassins Creed -- Michael Fassbender to star
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