Gazprom Media to Adapt Sci-Fi Epic ‘Metro 2033’ as Feature Film

Russia’s Gazprom Media has acquired the rights to adapt the post-apocalyptic sci-fi franchise Metro 2033 as a feature film.

Dmitry Glukhovsky’s trilogy of Metro novels has been a global best-seller, and the series was turned into a hit series of first-person shooter video games by 4A Games and publishers THQ. The novels, and games, are set in the ruins of Moscow following a nuclear war, with survivors forced to live in the city’s underground subway tunnels.

Gazprom subsidiaries TNT Premier Studios, TV-3 Channel and Central Partnership will team up on the feature film version of Metro 2033.

There have been several Hollywood attempts to adapt Metro 2033. MGM picked up the rights to the first book in 2012, with F. Scott Frazier (xXx: Return of Xander Cage) attached to adapt the novel for the screen. But the project was cancelled —reportedly due to Glukhovsky’s insistence that the film be set in Moscow and not Americanized.

Filming on Metro 2033 is set to start next year with a Jan.1, 2022 delivery date.

“Metro 2033 is my first novel. It played a very special role in my life, and, despite getting numerous offers to screen it, I turned them all down for over 10 years,” Glukhovsky said in a statement. “But now I finally met a team that I can entrust Metro with. Our ambitions turned out to be similar: to create a world-class blockbuster and stun even those who have read the trilogy and know it by heart.”

Valery Fedorovich, who will produce Metro 2033, said the books and video games have become “embedded in the cultural code of sci-fi fans and gamers all over the planet.” Fedorovich called Metro 2033 “a dream project” and said it was the “most ambitious and large-scale film” every launched by Gazprom Media.

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