The upcoming Lionsgate film, Gamer, about people controlling people (PCP?) in two different massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) - one is a FPS-style game, while the other is reminiscent of 2nd Life - is an intriguing concept; that the co-writers and directors admit to playing very little video games themselves is equally so. Though they spent some time on 2nd Life and Call of Duty before the movie, Crank creators Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine openly admit that they’re not big gamers.
"We're not big gamers. We played GTA because we were going to write GTA, and we got addicted to that for a couple of weeks, but it was Pac-Man before that."
Gamer is an Existenz-flavored film with a dollop of Madworld on the top. It stars Terry Crews, Gerard Butler and Michael C. Hall and was described by Taylor and Neveldine as a “throwback to '80s style Sci-Fi.” That is, a movie concerned with more than just space ships.
Says Brian Taylor, "Some Science Fiction movies are basically an action movie or a horror movie with spaceships in it. Our favorite kind are [those] from the '70s and '80s where there are issues involved. Solyent Green, the original Rollerball, things like that. We wanted to do a throwback to those sorts of movies...and say something about where we could go."
You can trust that the creators of Crank will deliver a product equally as frenetic and wild in Gamer. All the major elements are there for them: violence, s*x, and more violence. Whether Gamer can deliver a Sci-Fi story with insight in our society or make a commentary on the effects of gaming on people is something we will have to judge for ourselves.
Gamer opens nationwide on September 4. There are no plans to make a game about the movie as of now.
