Mass Effect: From Game to Movie

EA vidgame franchise to get feature treatment
Legendary Pictures has acquired feature rights to Electronic Arts' vidgame franchise Mass Effect and will develop the project under its co-production and co-financing agreement with Warner Bros.

Story, created by EA's BioWare subsidiary, takes place in the year 2183 and follows a team on a mission to defeat an ancient alien race that invades the galaxy every 50,000 years and wipes out all organic life.

Legendary's Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni will produce the film with Avi and Ari Arad. BioWare co-founders Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk will exec produce along with Mass Effect executive producer Casey Hudson.

Warner Bros. will distribute the film worldwide. Mark Protosevich ("I Am Legend") is in talks to pen the screenplay.

EA, which acquired BioWare in 2008, released Mass Effect 2 in January.

"At BioWare, we've always thought of Mass Effect as having the depth, emotion and plot twists perfectly suited for an adaptation to a motion picture," Hudson said.

EA has also set up a bigscreen version of "Spore" at Fox with Chris Wedge ("Ice Age") to helm and "The Sims," also at the studio, with John Davis producing. At Universal, it has "Army of Two," with director Peter Berg, and "Dante's Inferno," with Strike Entertainment producing. DJ Caruso will helm "Dead Space," with Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey producing, and "Mass Effect" is set up with Avi Arad.

Prior to Monday's announcement, Legendary's major foray into vidgame adaptations has been development of Blizzard's "World of Warcraft" with Sam Raimi attached to direct.

UTA reps EA

Source: Variety

Bloom, Corden join 'Musketeers'

Orlando Bloom and James Corden have joined the cast of Paul W.S. Anderson's 3D version of "The Three Musketeers" for Constantin Film and Impact Pictures.

Bloom will play the Duke of Buckingham while British comedian Corden will portray the servant Planchet. Bloom recently completed work on "The Good Doctor," in which he stars and produces.

Previously announced cast for "Musketeers" includes Christoph Waltz as Cardinal Richelieu; Logan Lerman as D¹Artagnan; Matthew MacFadyen, Ray Stevenson and Luke Evans as Athos, Porthos and Aramis, respectively; Milla Jovovich as M¹lady De Winter; and Mads Mikkelsen as Rochefort.

Summit has slated "Musketeers" for a summer 2011 U.S. release and Constantin will distribute in Germany. Summit sold out all territories at Cannes.

Screenplay's adatpted from the Alexandre Dumas' novel by Andrew Davies and Alex Litvak. Anderson is also

producing, along with Impact partner Jeremy Bolt and Robert Kulzer of Constantin.

Warner Bros. signed Doug Liman last month to direct its version of Alexandre Dumas' adventure tale, which is being aimed for a fall

Source:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118019732.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&nid=2562&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+variety%2Fheadlines+%28Variety+-+Latest+News%29