Duke Nukem and
Deadpool have a lot of in common, and the producers of the upcoming movie adaptation of the popular video game series are looking to the Merc with a Mouth's film in attempt to learn from its success.
Speaking to
Cinemablend about their new film
A Quiet Place, Andrew Form and Brad Fuller said they are currently working on
Duke Nukem , while confirming that WWE superstar John Cena is still on board to play the titular role. They also emphasized one of the key challenges is getting the tone right, and for that they look at Tim Miller's
Deadpool.
"We are working on Duke Nukem right now. It's going to be about tone. That's about tone," Form said.
"How do you nail that tone in the way that Deadpool nailed the tone? I think we have to do that and if we don't get the tone right then we're not going to make the movie."
To the surprise of many, Fox found incredible success with
Deadpool. Like the Marvel antihero, Duke Nukem also shares an over-the-top personality; he's an egotistical, sexist jerk and his games share similar themes of "metacommentary on pop culture and satire of excessive masculinity." Although
Deadpool's brand of comedy seemed to be welcomed by most audiences, Form is well aware of the hypersensitive culture that surrounds us, and he admits that makes it difficult to develop the video game character for the big screen.
Form explained:
"You know that having a misogynistic guy in today's world, how do you make that fun and lovable and at the same time he's got to be an incredible badass, so those are the things that we're struggling with and we're going to try and come out with what I hope is a really fun ride. That's the goal, is for it to be a really fun ride."
To take audiences on that ride
will be WWE superstar John Cena, who Form says is still on board to star as the titular character pending the final script.
"Yeah, that's what we're working with now. He is. Yes," Form revealed.
"We don't have a script yet, so that is confirmed at this point but if he reads the script and he doesn't like the script I'm sure there's ways that he could pull out, but right now he's our guy."
Another struggle which Form doesn't seem to address is the dreaded video game curse - the inability for Hollywood to make a successful movie adaptation of a video game franchise. Hopefully Cena will have more success than Dwayne Johnson - another former WWE superstar - had in
Doom.