It’s not often we get screenwriters going into so much depth ahead of time with their work, but then, when they’re adapting a video game, there’s not much to keep secret. Especially when it’s God of War.
The guy gets angry, kills gods, and kills them brutally. Spoilers!
Still, those wondering just what kind of overall shape the upcoming adaptation is currently taking, here’s what Patrick Melton (one of two writers alongside Marcus Dunstan) has to say:
In the game… there’s that attack from the barbarians and Kratos has to call upon Ares to help him. Really, that’s going to be our first act break. Before then, he’s going to be mortal, and he’s going to have his family. We’re going to learn about him and understand how he operates. So it’s potentially 30 minutes — give or take — of building up this character so that, when he does turn and becomes the Ghost of Sparta, we understand him as a human and we understand the journey that he’s going to take. We’re emotionally invested, so that it could go beyond just this one movie.
Meanhile, Dunstan likens the project to Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy, stripping back a character’s exploits to see the actual character behind them. “In the same way that Batman was grounded with Christopher Nolan’s rendition, we were attempting to do that with Kratos so that when we meet him — like they’re doing in this newest game, which is sort of a prequel to the original — we’re seeing him before he became the Ghost of Sparta, when he was just a Spartan warrior and he had family and kids.”
If you were wondering what kind of budget the movie had to work with, this doesn’t sound like a straight-to-DVD kind of deal. Melton says Sony is spending around $US150 million on the project, which given the fact they don’t need to spend much on wardrobe, should hopefully mean some impressive effects.
Shame it won’t be like this, though. I liked that pitch better.
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