It turns out the Gears of War movie probably won’t hew too closely to the story told over the course of the popular video game franchise. It’s now been confirmed that the upcoming flick will tell its own, entirely different story set in an alternate reality to the games.
Gears of War developer The Coalition revealed this to IGN in a recent interview, during which studio head Rod Fergusson explained that for the Gears movie to work, it needs to remove itself from the canon of the games.
Fergusson said:
In order for the movie to be successful, it has to be a great movie first and a Gears movie second. Basically the way that we sort of reconciled that was, we said, ‘oh the movie should be an alternate reality. It should not be dependent on the game story, nor should it influence the game story.’
While it certainly makes sense, there are undoubtedly fans who are going to be a little disappointed to learn that they won’t be going to the cinema to see a straight-up retelling of the first game, which explored the bonds that can be forged even in the face of absolute destruction.
That’s not to say the movie won’t address similar themes, however, even if it does drop certain characters or plot elements. Fergusson explained that a big part of the reasoning behind this decision was to allow filmmakers the creative freedom to put their own mark on Gears of Wars.
He said:
I’ve heard of other franchises who come with this really large story Bible and this really sort of, here are all the rules now go and deal with 700 pages of how you live in our world. When we did it, we were two pages. I was like, ‘Here’s two pages of thou shall nots and recommendations.’ We want people to have the freedom to have new ideas and to take things differently.
Despite this, Fergusson still believes that the film should be set on Sera and feature prominent characters from the games (such as Marcus and Dom, presumably) for it to have a real emotional impact for fans, and remain a meaningful Gears story.
A Gears of War movie has been in development at Universal since 2016. No directors or actors have been announced for the film, though the wonderful Dave Bautista has said he’d consider Marcus Fenix “a dream role.”
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Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.