Shadow Of The Colossus Creator Hints At Movie Involvement

During a chat last week with Kotaku about his upcoming PlayStation 3 game, developer Fumito Ueda discussed two key, but uncertain, developments regarding his much-loved PlayStation 2 work.

Ueda indicated that he will play some role in the creation of the April-announced Shadow of the Colossus movie. The project would turn into a movie the Ueda-directed 2005 PS2 adventure that featured a boy wandering the plains, hunting quiet lumbering beasts. “It won’t be that I’m completely not involved,” he said of the film.

The developer shied away from providing details about the planned movie.

The spring announcement of the Hollywood project was received skeptically among gamers scorched by a film industry that has failed to make good movies about games half as subtle and respected as Shadow of the Colossus. Ueda’s apparent involvement in the film, if significant enough, could calm some of that concern.

Ueda also provided us a minor update on the future of both Shadow of the Colossus and its predecessor, Ico, on modern video game systems. Both games are considered modern classics and are at least thematically linked to Ueda and Team Ico’s next project, The Last Guardian. (Read Ueda talk more about that game.) The recent announcement of a slightly-enhanced port of the PS2 God of War games to the PS3 has compelled gamers to buzz about their hope for a similar compilation port of the PS2′s Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. The developer wants it to happen too.

“I do have an interest in that,” Ueda said during our Friday chat. “Next week, I’ll have a meeting [about the possibility]… But it might not be so easy, because, with both titles we really stretched the limits of the PS2. It’s complex. So it’s not such an easy transfer to the PS3. But I want to discuss it.”

The work of Ueda’s team lives on in many discussions about the best video games of the past decade. At TGS, Ueda gave signs that that work may also have a good future on the big screen and on the PS3 as well.