They said you couldn’t turn a theme park ride into a good movie and Jerry Bruckheimer brought us Pirates of the Caribbean. Now he looks to set right the damage done by Hollywood to video games with his Prince of Persia. Set in the middle ages in Arabia, this video game movie will be different from the rest.
“It’s a game that was brought to us early on, and I thought it was very exciting,” said Bruckheimer. “First of all, it’s an interesting period and it’s something that other people weren’t doing. So I always like to go into arenas that other filmmakers aren’t in. I think it’s the 8th or 9th century but you know, that could change, too. We might change it a little. It’ll definitely be a period film. We’re not going to make it contemporary.”
Maybe video game movies have always sucked, but perhaps that’s because producers have never quite attached the high caliber talent they deserve. “I think we hired a very interesting director, Mike Newell who did one of the Harry Potters and also Donnie Brasco. He’s a very inventive, ingenious director and I think he’s going to bring something really special to it.”
While the script is not quite final, Bruckheimer has time before he needs to set it in stone. “Well, we’re not going to film ’til June so hopefully the writers will come to some kind of consensus with the studios and we can continue. We’re just starting. We have a screenplay. We’re just starting to develop the look of it, so it will be unique and fresh.”
Should it go as well as most Bruckheimer productions, the door is wide open for a major franchise a la Pirates. “It’s a big production, and if they work it’s another character you can take on to other adventures.”
Check out our earlier chat with Prince director Mike Newell (“It’s very exciting and it’s immensely romantic and it’s like Lost Horizon. It takes you to somewhere you’ve never been.”), who also then dropped a deliberate Stonehenge reference — hinting at his upcoming film’s plot, perhaps?
