Director Ruben Fleischer got his feature career off to a great start making both Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less, but his most recent venture hasn't had quite the same kind of success. Gangster Squad, which was released in January following a multi-month bump in the schedule following the Aurora, Colorado theater shooting, received a very tepid response from both critics and audiences, the movie only making $87 million globally on a $60 million budget. But Fleischer is a talented guy who will likely rebound - and it could be with a new video game adaptation.
Deadline is reporting that Warner Bros. has attached the filmmaker to direct SpyHunter, a new action movie based on the classic 1980s arcade game that was given a reboot on the Playstation 2 back in 2001. Part of the "vehicular combat" genre of gaming, the series has players drive around in James Bond-esque supercars blowing up bad guys and avoiding civilians. Carter Blanchard, who wrote the upcoming Ringan Ledwidge sci-fi film Glimmer, is scripting the adaptation, while Dan Lin (Sherlock Holmes) and Roy Lee (The Woman In Black) will produce. The most recent title in the franchise, Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run (which actually featured Dwayne Johnson as the main character), was released in 2006.
The site notes that this isn't the first time that studios have tried to get a SpyHunter movie off the ground, and previous versions of the project have featured directors like John Woo and Paul W.S. Anderson (Johnson was actually going to star in a Spy Hunter: Nowhere to Run movie before the film was trapped in development hell). We'll have to wait and see how this attempt pans out for the studio, but the hirings suggest that they know exactly what they want.
