Chronicle Director Hired for Shadow of the Colossus Movie

Posted by on May 24th, 2012   Filed under: Fantasy, Games
Source: Deadline

Chronicle might not have put up the same box office numbers as a certain other recent superhero movie, but considering its shoestring budget, it was clearly a big success. You can tell it made Fox money because director Josh Trank is now in extremely high demand across Hollywood. Over the past few months, he has landed potential deals to direct a Fantastic Four reboot for Fox, a new Venom movie for Sony, and The Red Star adaptation for Warner Brothers. Not too shabby. Now this week he has signed on for another unexpected tentpole for Sony. According to Deadline, he will direct a live action movie based on their popular Shadow of the Colossus video game.

Shadow of the Colossus was created by Fumito Ueda, the legendary Japanese game designer who also came up with the highly influential Ico. The game was originally released for the Playstation 2 back in 2005, but was recently upgraded to HD for the PS3 last year. The plot revolves around a young man who must ride across a mystical land on horseback and defeat sixteen different giants (the colossi) in order to save the life of a girl. There are no other enemies in the game.

Sony has been trying to set up a big screen version of Shadow of the Colossus since back in 2009, when Justin Marks (Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li) was attached to write the script. It now appears that they are seeking a new writer for the project. The game is unique in the sense that it’s very deliberately paced, and a faithful movie adaptation would likely require a subtle, artistic touch. It’s difficult to get excited based on the poor results from previous video game adaptations, but perhaps Trank can buck the trend. Are you interested in a Shadow of the Colossus movie and is Josh Trank the right man for the job?



  • bilbo

    Why is this even happening? SotC was a GREAT game with MINIMUM DIALOGUE. None from the protagonist. HOW are they exactly planning on making this movie without completely revamping the entire premise. The silence was the greatest part of the game. It made the player feel a sense of isolation. Sometimes I hate Hollywood.

  • Jr

    This could be awesome if it were treated like an Imax nature documentary and not like a big-budget Clash of the Titans/Sucker Punch type blockbuster. But watching a guy riding around on a horse looking at the scenery and killing lizards would probably bore some people so I can’t see how this wouldn’t end up being just a movie of nothing but monster battles. This is probably my #1 favorite game of all time though so I hope it if does get made, they do it some justice.

  • Jonny Ashley

    Yeah I think this is a pretty awful idea. There isn’t anything I care to see rehashed or repeated from the games into a movie form. There are already 500 fan films available for that.

    I remember when SOTC was still being developed it was about multiple riders taking down the collossi. I think a drama based around that is the only logical concept for this film. But the whole thing is stupid.

  • kyri

    great game.

  • I’d love to see a video game to movie adaptation that wasn’t announced beforehand and was not named the same as the game. Just take the themes from said game, and let someone run with it without the expectations or lack thereof, that come with this type of project.

    Then if people enjoy it, they can come out afterwards and say ‘yeah this was based on Shadow of the Colossus, and you can’t take back the review scores now! hahahah’. And if not, no one will be able to say that it’s yet another failed adaptation.

    But of course the studio wants that built in audience who will shell out for it on opening day. The same audiences that will say, much like Frank once did, that we’ve already played the Shadow of the Colossus movie.

  • Kasper

    I love Shadow of the Colossus, but don’t really have any interest in watching a movie based on the game. I don’t see how it could be good as a blockbuster-type flick.

  • Steve Kasan

    Like most here I love this game. It is the perfect example of videogames treated as art, but, as a film? It just doesn’t work unless you get some rich suckers to finance a 3 hour art film directed by Lars Von Trier or something.