Yahoo! had a sit-down with producer Scott Faye last week with regards to two of his upcoming projects. Those two projects being video game adaptations of Max Payne and American McGee’s Alice.
For those who don’t know, American McGee was the level designer and a member of the programming staff at id Software for classics such as Doom, Doom II, Quake and Quake II. After his stint at id, American went to Electronic Arts and created his darker take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, the flawed yet fun American McGee’s Alice. The game has been scheduled to be made into a movie for quite some time, with Marcus Nispel directing and Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shaun Landers starring. Problem is, the film has been stuck in development hell during that time, along with Max Payne, the Hong Kong action-flick-cum-film-noir influenced 3rd person shooter about a man with nothing to lose after the death of his family by a big-time gangster (think THE PUNISHER, except it’s in New York).
Other than having a script written by Sam Lake and Shawn Ryan (who wrote the script for the game and its sequel), Payne has even less info attached to it. There’s an indie film called MAX PAYNE: PAYNE & REDEMPTION set to be released this summer, but the film is an unofficial sequel to the games, and has nothing to do with the studio film (check out the indie film’s official site if you’re curious).
The article for the most part talks of the approach that Faye and company are looking for with both films, as well as talk of the recent slip-ups by big-name video game film adaptations (BLOODRAYNE and DOOM, anyone?). At the end of the article, it hints at the possibility that both Payne and Alice would see the light of day in 2007, which would be great. I myself enjoyed Max Payne immensely, and while I haven’t had the opportunity to play American McGee’s game, I’m sure that both films will rock. Stay tuned.