Back in October last year we had reported that the screen rights of Army of Two had been acquired by Universal Pictures. It was disclosed that the script of the movie would be penned by Scott Z. Burns who was also associated with The Bourne Ultimatum. It is now revealed that The Army of Two movie will follow a whole new path than that of the acclaimed games.
EA Montreal vice president and general manager Alain Tascan told VideoGamer that they are still working closely with Burns but as far as the creation of the script goes, it will have a different approach altogether.
Alain Tascan stated, “We’re working together. We explain what the world is about, what the missions are about, and then we leave the guy to do his job. The way you tell a story in eight hours, 12 hours, and develop the characters, is completely different than two hours.”
The EA Montreal VP also added, “We just give him our reference and then he’s working. We read a few parts of the script and it’s very promising. Obviously he has his own style, and we want to keep some big moments we had in the game, but it’s like, I don’t want to say parallel, it’s like a different path. He respects our world and we respect completely the movie, but we don’t want to attach the things together.”
The hands-off approach was decided by the company as many other movies that were too closely related to their source material lacked that panache. Tascan said that all the movies that tried to be closely related to the respective game did not turn out as expected. He is hopeful that with top quality partners like the writer and producer, the Army of Two movie should also emerge with top quality.
Army of Two: The 40th Day game is expected to release on January 8, 2010 for the PS3, PSP and the Xbox 360.