[Via Gamedaily BIZ]
Not long ago I was reading about upcoming movies for 2008 and the rest of 2007 on imdb and I noticed a disturbing trend of video game based movies that are in the works. I still haven’t seen a movie based on a game that did not deserve the riffing treatment from Mystery Science Theater 3000 (one of my favorite shows BTW). It seems that Hollywood studios want to turn every popular franchise into a movie in the hopes of cashing in and now they are going to do it to the arcade classic Joust.
First I can’t help but wonder why now? I also wonder why they chose Joust of all the classic games to make a movie. Sinistar probably would be easier to work with but it doesn’t matter as that would probably suck anyways. Games should stay as games, not turned into B-movies. According to the producer, the movie will take place in Las Vegas, 25 years in the future where the city is suspended in mid-air. Now we all know that movies featuring cities in the air means cinematic gold, especially when they hype it as being “Gladiator meets Mad Max”. Of course how they will work lava showing up in Las Vegas remains to be seen (in case you are not aware, Las Vegas had nothing to do with the original game) They even go as far as mentioning the success of Transformers, which somehow translates into a great market for Joust as apparently all those young kids who loved Transformers just can’t wait to see guys getting knocked of flying ostriches. Either way they are set for releasing this next June, along with a new comic book series based on the game by Dark Horse Comics. We now wait with baited breath to see how Hollywood is going to ruin the memory of this beloved game franchise.
