Roger Avary to make Return to Castle Wolfenstein Movie
Many of you might not remember this but, before Quake, Before Doom, there was Wolfenstein 3D - considered to be the first first person shooter video gameof all time. It’s even more popular sequel, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, was released in November 2001. And now Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary is set to write and direct a feature film adaptation.
The game is based on Castle Wewelsburg, a 17th century castle occupied by the Germans under Heinrich Himmler’s control, and used for occult rituals and practices. The game begins in Nazi-occupied Europe during 1943 and revolves around U.S. Army Ranger B.J. Blazkowicz, who, along with another agent, is sent to investigate rumors surrounding one of Heinrich Himmler’s personal projects, the SS Paranormal Division. The agents are, however, captured before completing their mission and are imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein. Blazkowicz must escape the castle and continue investigating the activities of the SS Paranormal Division, which include research on resurrecting corpses, bio-technology, and secret weapons.
While Return to Castle Woldenstein is technically a sequel, without the name and the occasional in-game references, it might be unrecognizable as a part of the series.
There are not many video game properties that have the potential to be made into an entertaining movie, but this may be one of them. And Roger Avary is a geek an academy award winning writer in his own right. In addition to co-writing the upcoming Robert Zemeckis computer animated Beowulf with Neil Gaiman, Avary was also behind The Rules of Attraction and Killing Zoe, two very underrated indie films which you should probably add to your Netflix list. Oh yeah, and he helped scribble out a little film titled Pulp Fiction.
New Beowulf Movie Trailer
I just got home from a screening of Transformers in IMAX (more on that later), where they premiered another new trailer for Robert Zemeckis’ Beowulf. Aside from the 3D coolness, I really have no interest in seeing this flick. The animation or motion capture looks as the story, which I’m sad to say was a collaboration between Comic book legend Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary (Rules of Attraction, Killing Zoe, Pulp Fiction). I expect way better from everyone involved, including Zemeckis. And I’m still not sure I understand why you would go through all the trouble of motion capture to make the animated character look exactly like a zombie version of the original actor/actress. Just seems like an extreme waste of time to me. You can check out the new trailer after the jump.
Beowulf hits theaters on November 16th 2007.