Wednesday 24 August 2011

Warner Bros. wants Affleck for "FPS: THE MOVIE"

THR reports that Warner Bros. and Joel Silver are courting Ben "Comeback Kid" Affleck to direct and star in the high-concept action feature "Line of Sight." The screenplay is a commandos-transporting-cargo-through-enemy-territory deal, but here's the gimmick: They want to do the whole thing in POV, "akin to a first-person shooter game." Gaming-industry vet F. Scott Frazier wrote the original script, but it's now being 'polished' by "Halo: Reach" writer Peter O'Brien.

This was probably innevitable, what with the penetration Call of Duty etc. have had in the media, but it doesn't stop it from being a not great idea. The "FPS sequence" in the "Doom" movie was a cute moment, but the equivalent of watching someone play CoD for 90 minutes on a big screen? No thanks.

"First person" filmmaking has been tried before, most notably for "Lady in The Lake" in 1947, but it's never really caught on as anything but a stylistic gimmick that tends to get a little old. Watching an entire movie over the barrel of Ben Affleck's rifle-barrel sounds like unmitigated torture... though not QUITE as torturous as the innevitable studio spin about how this perspective "brings action filmmaking up to date with the vibe of a New Generation." Blegh.

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