"Spore" animated film

[Bryko614]

Twentieth Century Fox has paired up with Electronic Arts to turn the publisher’s popular “Spore” game into an animated creature feature, with “Ice Age’s” Chris Wedge attached to helm.

Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, who penned Disney’s upcoming “The Princess and the Frog” and Ben Stiller pic “The Return of King Doug” at Paramount, will write the script for the “Spore” movie. It will be produced as a CG-animated toon by EA and Blue Sky Studios, which is behind the studio’s “Ice Age” pics, “Robots” and its next effort, “Rio.”

In the game, which was released in September 2008, players create their own creatures and the worlds they live in and share them with other gamers to create an overall universe.

“I’m always looking for unique worlds to go to in animation,” Wedge said. “From every perspective – visually, thematically and comedically – the world of ‘Spore’ provides the potential to put something truly original on the screen.”

Fox is especially high on Wedge after “Ice Age” turned into a major franchise for the studio, generating $1.9 billion from three pics since 2002. He recently exec produced the third installment and “Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who” for Fox.

Last week, the studio locked down the toon “Leaf Men” for Wedge to direct, stopping a tug-of-war with Pixar (Daily Variety, Sept. 23). Blue Sky is also producing that pic for Fox Animation.

Wedge additionally has the live-action pic “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” set up at Warner Bros., with Graham King and Johnny Depp producing.

EA Entertainment’s Patrick O’Brien will exec produce the “Spore” pic with Lucy Bradshaw, VP of Maxis Studio, which developed the game with Will Wright, who also created the blockbuster “Sim City” and “The Sims” franchises for EA.

A movie is seen as a way to not only boost interest among current gamers and newbies to the property, especially as sequels and expansion packs are released, but also to create a new source of revenue for EA.

So far, various iterations of “Spore” have sold more than 3.2 million units.

Yet, "with more than 100 million unique creatures uploaded to our website, it’s clear that people are passionate about the game, and it will be exciting to offer a powerful medium like film in order to expand their experience with ‘Spore,’ " Bradshaw said.

EA has set up a bigscreen version of “The Sims” at Fox, with John Davis producing. At Universal, it has “Army of Two,” with director Peter Berg, and “Dante’s Inferno,” with Strike Entertainment producing. DJ Caruso will helm “Dead Space,” with Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey producing, and “Mass Effect” is set up with Avi Arad.

The “Spore” pact is the sixth pic deal that EA has set up since it aligned with UTA.

variety.com/article/VR111800 … id=13&cs=1

This could either be really interesting, or absolutely horrible. I hope they don’t make them talk.

[wannabechef91]

This can be awesome (fan of the game) or stupid (EA hater - well, for The Sim & FIFA series only)

[lizardgirl]

I’m not sure about this…It’s a pretty cool game, but movies based on games are usually terrible. I’ll wait until this develops a bit more before judging it, but it just seems a bit strange to me.

[M-O]

It can be a good movie but it’s not that likely. I guess if it’s done by Blue Sky Animation it shouldn’t be so bad.

[thedriveintheatre]

Chris Wedge again? Don’t the Blue Sky folks have anyone else but him? I don’t know about the premise, but I think there are a lot more cooler video games to adapt; like Little Big Planet, Modern Warfare, Need for Speed, Uncharted, etc.

[FounderofAzn]

I agree with you on that thedriveintheatre. I’m having a hard time imagining what a Spore movie would look like when there are clearly other games that deserve to be…movie-fied. Bioshock for example.

[DocKenobi]

Forget the newer games. How bout Sonic the Hedgehog? Metroid? Castlevania? Zelda. I know there is a way to do Zelda as a movie, and still do justice to the franchise, and definitely not have Link talking, aside from small phrases. I don’t care if it’s straight to DVD, or a pack-in with a game or something, but I want to see a live-action Zelda.

I can kinda see Spore, though. I know little about the game, and I don’t even know if a story exists, but it seems pretty popular, plus I can see the appeal of the all the crazy, different creatures in an animated movie.

[Badger]

Even though I adore Spore (hey, that rhymes) I think a movie would be hard to make, especially sticking to the original storyline of the game and the way everyone’s creatures are different…

But I have faith in Blue Sky… I loved the Ice Age films, and Horton, too.