Justin Marks, the “go to geek” when Hollywood need a fanboy project translating to the big screen has landed yet another huge deal to his growing list of fan favourite properties.
The Hollywood Reporter say Marks will scribe an adaptation of Shawdow of the Colossus, a mega popular Sony Entertainment fantasy video game which has been set up for a film adaptation by the producer of Public Enemies. The game was first released on the Playstation 2 in 2005 and has quickly become one of Sony’s flagship titles.
The game centers on the character Wander, who along with his horse Agro travels across a Western-style landscape to defeat enemies known as Collosi, with Wander’s larger aim to save the girl Mono.
The game’s landscape is minimalist and lacks some of the ensemble characters of other video games; instead, the challenge lies in locating the remote Colossi and uncovering their weaknesses through a series of puzzle-like challenges. Its scenes as well as its soundtrack are regarded by many as highly cinematic.
Marks is the writer behind upcoming geek projects Voltron, Hack/Slash, Masters of the Universe, Super Max, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and is known to churn our scripts at lightning fast pace. Though we should remember, his only script so far filmed and completed is Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-Li, a disastrous film but one that shows up a bad production in all areas and not just the writing.
Often talked about with Shadow of the Colossus is the cinematic, epic score of which you can hear in the trailer for the game I have showcased below…
Game looks incredible and I’m dumbfounded as to why I haven’t really heard of it until now. If you have played it, let me know whether you think it can work for film!
4 Comments
but why should this be any different from the gazillion other games-to-film failures we’ve seen the last, I don’t know, ten years? making a movie out of a video game just isn’t working out, man. now matter how pretty the game looks.
i dont know it was amazing but it was so amazing becaues it was so different for a game there was barely any dialogue but i think it could work if they got the right people to do it.
Shadow of the Colossus is the reason I finally broke down and bought a PS2. I generally can’t stand Sony and have always been a Nintendo fanboy, well at least up until the Wii came out, now I’m partial to Microsoft more or less, but this game is absolutely amazing. The musical score in particular is what I feel sets it apart. It actually makes you feel like you are in this epic battle. Most games have no concept of how to use musical scores effectively, they just ‘throw some awesome music’ over all the fight scenes, but this game actually had different scores for the different collosi if I remember correctly, so each fight felt different than the previous one. Plus the puzzle solving involved in figuring out the weaknesses of the different collosi was fun and interesting, not just ‘go here, press button’ or ‘just use this item to defeat it’ like most rpgs have turned into. One of the top ten games I have ever played.
The Justin Marks script does make me a little nervous though since Street Fighter was a complete disaster, but hey, everyone has ONE bad movie, I’ll give him a second shot when one of his other projects comes out.
The Hans Zimmer score is beautiful, but I’ve honestly no idea how this adaptation could be tackled since there is so little dialogue. The story (particularly the conclusion) is emotional, but how that can be converted to the big screen when there are giant colossi to be tackled I don’t know. The game only contains 3 core elements throughout the whole gameplay. Find out about the colossi, ride Agro (the horse) to it’s position, kill it. Rinse and repeat.