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Comic scribe to pen Area 51 film

By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpotPosted Apr 4, 2007 12:09 pm PT

Grant Morrison tapped to bring Midway's xenophobic shooter series to the silver screen.

The future of Midway's Area 51 franchise is shaping up to be appropriately alien. Midway Austin's upcoming multiplatform shooter BlackSite: Area 51 is being developed under the eye of Harvey Smith (Deus Ex), who's not shying away from mixing politics with gaming, something of a taboo in mainstream game development.

Now film industry trade magazine Variety is reporting that highly regarded and unconventional comic author Grant Morrison has been charged with writing the screenplay for Paramount Pictures' big-screen version of the game.

While Morrison has met with success in recent years for his revamps of long-standing superhero groups in the pages of JLA and New X-Men, he has also been unafraid to take his stories into politically controversial waters in untraditional titles like Animal Man and The Invisibles.

According to Variety, the movie will follow a viral outbreak at the titular top-secret military base and an outside investigator hired to determine if the disease is in fact alien in origin. No release date has been announced for the movie.

62 Comments

  • digitalmel

    Posted Apr 9, 2007 4:06 am PT

    LMFAO!
    csav82: as long as Aerosmith is nowhere near this game/movie, I'll be happy. LOL i could picture playin area 51 while listenin to 'I don't wanna miss a thing'!

  • uberjannie

    Posted Apr 7, 2007 5:27 pm PT

    guess who had a blog input on his gamespot blog about games thats getting ported to movies.. *whistles*
    ... in March!
    Ha eat my socks im a foreseer!

  • ogretroll123

    Posted Apr 7, 2007 4:33 pm PT

    What's with all these Video Game movies lately? Oh well, at least most of them aren't being directed by H.S. Anderson or Uwe Boll, but instead being directed by halfway decent directors.

  • panteral3

    Posted Apr 7, 2007 7:13 am PT

    Please, please keep Uwe Boll away from this.

  • ShellShocker42

    Posted Apr 6, 2007 10:10 pm PT

    hmm..wonder whos gonna play lead..david duchovany was good in the first game..but who knows

  • malkav11

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 5:18 pm PT

    Grant Morrison is an amazing writer, but boy is this ever a strange choice of projects.

  • daniel8501

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 11:45 am PT

    I still don't know what an anti-war, anti-military hippie like Harvey Smith is doing overseeing a game like this.

    A game that has to do with "War" and the military, but of course can't resist some good old political correctness.

  • Bulletlagsucks

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 11:28 am PT

    since when was "to pen" a verb

  • sieg6529

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 10:55 am PT

    why must movie producers tarnish the reputation of games?

  • csav82

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 10:54 am PT

    as long as Aerosmith is nowhere near this game/movie, I'll be happy.

  • smoothn00dle

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 10:53 am PT

    the first game is not that good. why anyone want to make a movie on it?

  • Get_Shorty

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 9:59 am PT

    Whhhy? Couldn't they come up with their own Area 51 movie? Though the premise does sound interesting

  • Pedro7_2000

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 7:55 am PT

    Surprise, surprise...but I will say I loved JLA so hopefully this is a good adaptation.

  • jarrodt

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 7:32 am PT

    unless he has a card up his sleeve, the whole viral thing is done to death.

  • WESLY_SNYPES

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 6:54 am PT

    Grant Morrison is a good fit because his stories border on X-Files type strange. But no one wants to see ANOTHER video game movie about a virus.

  • Sanguis_Malus

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 6:15 am PT

    Another game/film tie-in, unoriginal and shamelessly pathetic money spinner !

  • chrisdojo

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 5:17 am PT

    will this film have the usual game to movie problem..... ??

  • cjcr_alexandru

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 5:00 am PT

    Has this game been released? Because I see a release date of Q3 2007...

  • UrbanMessiah

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 3:27 am PT

    Grant Morrison definitely has the skills at writing, no doubt...Read any of his runs in a series for proof of that. My hope is that Hollywood BS doesn't ruin things by letting suits that more then likely never read his stuff or ever played the game have too much influence over his content. The right amount of outside influence would be about zero, IMO. -=x

  • dr_taffin

    Posted Apr 4, 2007 11:42 pm PT

    So are they gonna bring back David Duchovny from the game? He needs work more than Mr. T.

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