The flop that was ‘Battleship‘ showed us that movie audiences aren’t interested in movies based off of board games but Warner Brothers is betting big that ‘Monsterpocalypse’ will change that.
The film originally tried to happen back in 2010 and stalled for being too similar to Guillermo del Toro‘s ‘Pacific Rim.’ Thankfully a few years have passed and with ‘Pacific Rim 2’ delayed, director Fede Alvarez (‘Evil Dead‘,’Don’t Breathe’) has been pushing forward on this project and has Warner Brothers helping to bring ‘Monsterpocalypse’ to the big screen.
Warner Bros was competing with Dreamworks and Sony to make this happen. Alvarez is set to not only direct the film but pen the script with Rodo Sayagues who he typically writes with. The original movie was to be directed by Tim Burton based off of a script by John August. The new plot is rumored to have vastly been altered in order to keep ‘Pacific Rim’ comparisons from popping up.
With the studio having just picked up ‘Monsterpocalypse’ there is no release date set as of yet. However, as ‘Pacific Rim 2‘ was originally set for 2017 before it was postponed, it wouldn’t be too surprising for this to be fast-tracked in an attempt to beat it to the box office.
The original board game actually sounds quite a bit like ‘Pacific Rim’ as it puts humans who are in robot suits fighting against monsters. Privateer Press touts it as a “fast-moving, action-packed strategy game played with high-quality pre-painted miniatures portraying the most fearsome giant monsters on Earth.” The monsters have ranged from giant apes to dinosaurs to Martians to tentacled aliens which vaguely resemble Cthulhu. Basically, there are a ton of creatures that can be used here which if the first film is a success could easily turn this into an ongoing cinematic franchise.
Are you looking forward to ‘Monsterpocalypse’ giving us more giant monsters fighting one another on the big screen? Do you think Alvarez will have the vision needed for this or would you have preferred to see what Burton would have done pitting giant monsters against robots? Share your thoughts below!
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
Stuart Conover is an author, blogger, and all around geek. When not busy being a father and husband he tries to spend as much time as possible immersed in comic books, science fiction, and horror! Would you like to know more? Follow him on Twitter!
