About sixteen years have gone by since we first heard that Sony was developing a film adaptation of the video game Shadow of the Colossus, a project that passed through the hands of Chronicle director Josh Trank and Shōgun writer Justin Marks before Andy Muschietti, who has gone on to direct the It films and The Flash, came on board in September of 2014. When you haven’t heard anything about a project in ten and a half years, you can usually safely assume that it has been scrapped – but during an interview with Radio TU, he said that Shadow of the Colossus is not an abandoned project. He still hopes to make the movie… he’s just having trouble getting studio support for it.
Originally released in 2005, the video game Shadow of the Colossus focuses on a young man, known only to the audience as Wander (or “the Wanderer”), who is tasked with finding and killing sixteen colossi that reside in a desolate expanse of land, in the hopes of resurrecting a sacrificed girl named Mono. A remake of the game was released in 2018.
Muschietti told Radio TU, with thanks to Newsweek for the transcription, “I’m not a big gamer, but Shadow of the Colossus seems to me a masterpiece and I played it several times. The movie has been in development for 10 years. … (It’s) not an abandoned project, far from it. I love this film, there is a script that I like a lot, but there are factors that have nothing to do with your desire to make it, but with how popular an intellectual property like this is. Shadow of the Colossus is a cult game.” According to Muschietti, Sony doesn’t feel the property is popular enough to warrant the budget he would need, which could be around $200 million, to bring the adaptation to the screen.
So Muschietti still wants to make Shadow of the Colossus, he’s still attached to the project and there’s a script in place, but it’s being held back by budgetary issues.
Muschietti is also attached to direct the DCU Batman film The Brave and the Bold, but since that project has been delayed to make way for Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II, he’s currently writing a science fiction screenplay that could end up being his next movie.
Would you like to see Andy Muschietti get Shadow of the Colossus into production? Share your thoughts on this video game adaptation by leaving a comment below.
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