Unbelievably, next week marks the final episode in the first regular season of This Ain't No Game. Having nearly completed my self-flagellating quest to watch every video-game movie ever made, I'm left looking to the future for more fetishistic cinematic abuse. Luckily (?) for me, the bad-decision factory called Hollywood is wasting no time cranking out more game-to-film adaptations. Here's the video-game movie news that's popped up this week alone!
-Rumors have been shambling around for a few months now, and earlier this week ShockTillYouDrop.com finally got official confirmation that a fourth Resident Evil movie, titled Resident Evil: Afterlife, is in the works. Production is already underway in Toronto, with a projected release of fall 2010. Paul W.S. Anderson, who has seen repeated success with bringing video games to the silver screen, will return to the franchise as both writer and director. Milla Jovovich and Ali Larter will reprise their roles of Alice and Claire Redfield, respectively. Additionally, actor Wentworth Miller, best known by me as the guy from the Prison Break DVD box, will take on the role of Claire's brother, Chris Redfield, while Shawn Roberts will assume the role of Wesker. The biggest "well of course it is" part of the announcement is that Resident Evil: Afterlife is being shot in 3D. Because, well, of course it is. The fourth film in a franchise is rarely the point at which things start getting really good, but I actually liked the setup left by the end of Resident Evil: Extinction. So long as they don't bitch out on the promise of hundreds of Alice clones tearing up Umbrella, Afterlife could be good fun.
-Former Disney exec Michael Eisner also might be getting in on the video-game-movie action. Joystiq, going from a "trusted source," is reporting that Eisner's The Tornante Company is currently developing a Mechwarrior movie. Dean Devlin, whose production credits includes Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla, is said to be producing, while Michael Gordon, whose writing credits include 300 and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, is said to be writing. Not the worst idea for a video-game movie, and the team being assembled should be capable of conjuring up some decent giant-robot popcorn action. Still, I don't know how they plan on topping this.
-Ray Park, AKA Darth Maul, is playing the villainous Rugal Bernstein in the upcoming King of Fighters movie, which I still kind of can't believe is an actual thing. A new video of Park surfaced on YouTube this week, and it basically consists of 30 breathtaking seconds of horribly out-of-context ADR work followed by two minutes of insight-free interview action. Enjoy!
-Lastly, in a fittingly dark turn, writer-slash-director Roger Avary was sentenced to a year in prison for gross vehicular manslaughter this week, according to Reuters. Avary, in addition to being Quentin Tarantino's writing partner on Pulp Fiction, wrote the first Silent Hill movie, and had signed on to pen its sequel.