Now, Jake was pretty ripped in both Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain.
He takes it to a whole new level for the Prince of Persia. The Jerry Bruckheimer’s production seems to be of epic scope indeed, since Jake has an year to get in character: note the hair, it’s not a wig (I think).
I find it amazing that someone in Hollywood has “underwritten” transferring Prince of Persia to the big screen – as a summer blockbuster too.
Effectively, this is a $150-million one-way bet on video games. Uwe Boll shot video game movies in Canada for 10M and barely broke even. Some even claim he did it for tax purposes, as German investors could write off the losses as an “investment in art.”
I can tell you right now what the NEXT game movie blockbuster is going to be. Sam Raimi was attached as Director to a World of Warcraft movie. Blizzard makes a billion a year in revenues from their hit MMORPG, I’m certain they can fork up $150 million.
Update: Gemma Arterton has been working out and tanning quite a bit too. She confessed she had to shed 10 pounds for the role of the princess. So it’s not just Jake that is a “serious” actor as Daily Mirror put it.
Ooooo, I dunno there. 10M is a pittance to be dropping on a game property. By their very nature, games do things that cost significantly when you jump to RL(from multiple environments requiring multiple sound stages or locations to sweeping camera shots). And just like superhero properties, the translations seem to be plagued by relatively low budgets, and they suffer for it. The superhero genre movies got significantly better when real talent and budget got attached to them (well, mostly they did, there are still a few dogs out there). That Bruckeimer is dropping 150m makes me hope they are going to be able to make the same type of leap.
POP is a well-loved game property, and the parkour-style gameplay is very popular with adventure-gamers and is becoming increasingly popular in film. Couple that with the experienced hand of Bruckheimers production teams, and we might (finally) have a property that’s going to make the leap.