NEW YORK — “Dark Void” will yield development matter.
Indian giant Reliance BIG Entertainment and Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle are developing a film version of the upcoming video game, and Pitt could well star as the lead combatant.
The two firms have acquired rights to the Capcom third-person shooter and will develop as a feature. The companies say that the project would be a “potential starring vehicle” for Pitt. No writers have been hired as yet.
“Void” centers on a a cargo pilot named Will (Pitt’s presumed character) who, after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle, ends up in a parallel universe where a band of humans must fight an alien threat they had long been thought extinct. Will and the other humans are outmanned but have a number of weapons and powers to help them beat back the alien incursion.
The game will be released for Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in January. CAA repped Plan B and Reliance in the deal; UTA-repped Capcom.
If it becomes a full-fledged film, the project could potentially be made via Reliance’s financing pact with DreamWorks and/or distributed through DreamWorks’ output deal with Disney, though no formal decisions have been made on either as yet.
The project is the first to come out of a development partnership between Plan B and Reliance that was announced at the Festival de Cannes in 2008. The Indian giant has deals with a number of other Hollywood production banners, including Julia Roberts’ Red Om and George Clooney’s Smokehouse.
Video games have had a mixed record on the big screen, with title likes “Max Payne” mutating into critical and commercial flops. But principals here pointed to advantages a “Dark Void” movie would have that its predecessors have not.
“As a game, ‘Dark Void’ was developed with a wide-screen mentality – a world full of adventure presented in cinematic scope and scale,” Capcom senior vp licensing Germaine Gioia said.
