Heavy Rain film "fast-tracked"

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 27 January, 2011

Deadwood creator at the helm.

A film based on superb PlayStation 3 exclusive Heavy Rain is in the works.

Warner Bros. is fast-tracking its production, according to a new report.

NYPD Blue and Deadwood creator David Milch has been charged with adapting David Cage's thriller, Variety reveals.

Milch will start writing "Rain", as it appears to be called, once he's finished work on the first season of HBO's horse-racing series Luck. A release date was not mentioned.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (34) Latest comment 1 year ago

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  • Stop-gap #1 1 year ago

    I still haven't played Heavy Rain, but Deadwood was great. I'd have pretty high hopes for this not turning out to be complete tat :)

  • GamesConnoisseur #2 1 year ago

    Interesting but seem to me having the game itself makes for better movie albeit an interactive and more involving one than a compressed into single storyline film?

    Which bits get missed out? Which character get most screen time?

    Hoping it's not a cash in but great that Cage directly involved.

  • Alf-Life #3 1 year ago

    I thought the Heavy Rain movie was already released under the name Se7en?

  • fabiosooner #4 1 year ago

    Best chance ever for a game-based film to be actually good. If it doesn't work, we can pretty much give up.

  • Daikon #5 1 year ago

    Kind of defeats the purpose of "interactive drama", does it not?

  • Razorus #6 1 year ago

    I'm with GamesConnoisseur on this. Seems a little pointless to me. Heavy Rain was very cinematic and was essentially a strong narrative interactive movie. An actual film is like a step back.
    If it's pulled off well though, it may help to bridge the gap between films and games. Perhaps some critics and naysayers of games will realise that our favourite medium can spawn good stories.

  • Murton #7 1 year ago

    Why is he writing a script exactly? History has shown that video games have been vastly superior in this area compared to the movies supposedly based on them. Evidence, Max Payne. Won a BAFTA for its story as a video game, won fuck all but derision from fans as a movie.

    I hope that Cage is being consulted every step of the way through this and has the power to intervene if things start to go pear shaped, I really want to enjoy this movie as much as I did the game but I'm not going to get my hopes up until we have some more details on how they're going about it.

  • el_pollo_diablo #8 1 year ago

    Well the upside of this is that, regardless of the quality of the final film, Quantic Dream will have more money in the bank to keep them safe and making more awesome games.

  • menage #9 1 year ago

    Better fix those gaping plotholes then.

    I felt really peeved after that so called revelation and frankly being lied to to cover up the real culprit.

  • StolenGlory #10 1 year ago

    No!

    Priorities!

    We need a fourth season of Deadwood and THEN you can make your crappy little film tie-in.

    Thanks in advance.

  • kangarootoo #11 1 year ago

    "I thought the Heavy Rain movie was already released under the name Se7en? "

    Yeah, because their key plots points are completely different..... oh

  • kangarootoo #12 1 year ago

    "Better fix those gaping plotholes then"

    QFT

  • kangarootoo #13 1 year ago

    @Murton

    Max Payne is surely the exception to a very firmly estalished rule. For the most part, film scripts vastly outreach those found in games.

    And also, lets not pretend that David Cage is an world class screenplay writer. In games he stands out because the competition is poor, but the writing (both plot and screenplay) in HR (a very good game, don't get me wrong) has a fair way to go before we can compare it to the likes of Memento, Magnolia, The Usual Suspects, or any of the top flite US serials of the last 5 years.

  • Miths #14 1 year ago

    Why make a movie of what is essentially already an interactive movie?
    And unless the plot is changed pretty radically, it's likely not going to be a movie that fans of the game would have much interest in, considering it's the typical thriller fare where when you already know "who did it" and how all the plot twists are laid out, the journey to that answer becomes a lot less exciting.

  • PlugMonkey #15 1 year ago

    @menage

    Quite right. Plot spoiler:

    Cage should try getting a movie audience to swallow the idea of a character being shown, on screen, in a different room, when he's apparently also simultaneously supposed to be committing a murder next door.

    I don't think people would go for it. How so many people consider that to be an acceptable piece of narrative in a video game is beyond me. If you did that in a movie, critics would quite rightly utterly fucking pan you for it.

    I would imagine they will probably just steal the central conceit of a father being forced to endure a series of increasingly appalling trials in the hope of saving his son from drowning in the rain (which is, to be fair, pretty interesting) and bin off everything else.

    Edit: to add 2nd spoiler tag, which I don't think really spoils anything, but might as well be sure.
    Edited by PlugMonkey at 27/01/11 @ 12:42

  • BOBBYLUPO #16 1 year ago

    As good as Heavy Rain was as a game, the plot was more like a crappy straight-to-video Joe Ezterhas film. To adapt it into a film just because it's a videogame is ridiculous. I can only assume David Milch sees it as easy money.

  • Dolly #17 1 year ago

    Deadwood, eh?

    "Jason! JASON! JASON YOU GODDARN CUNT!"

  • Murton #18 1 year ago

    @kangarootoo

    I meant games have better scripts than the movies based on said games. I'm yet to see a movie based on a game that does justice, most are piss poor cash-ins that should have been aborted, Max Payne is the best example of that.

    Thinking about it there are only two ways to make this movie well. 1: Tarantino style, do it like Pulp Fiction with mini-chapters covering what characters are doing at similar points in time 2: something like Sin City, three 45 minute stories each focussing on a single character's version of events. Trying to do it in the traditional format will only give one perspective, one version of events and won't capture the magic of the game. In fact, a TV series would probably be better than a movie from an artistic standpoint by a long way, not as much money to be made in doing that though.

  • menage #19 1 year ago

    @Plugmonkey

    Exactly what I meant. Glad I wasn't the only one that found that impossible to swallow.

  • barkertron #20 1 year ago

    I actually really enjoyed the plot of the game. Didn't think it was too shabby at all, especially in comparison to your typical computer game fare.

    I wonder if watching the film will spoil the game's ending? And vice versa?

    Also, Jason! Jason? Jason!

  • ZizouFC #21 1 year ago

    Wish they had finished the DLC.

    Don't really care about this. Could be goodish though.

  • nuanimal #22 1 year ago

    No.

    Heavy Rain is a gem of a game - with a brilliant story that doesn't need a movie tie-in.

  • mcreddie #23 1 year ago

    Why do this?

    Why not just get more people to play the awesome game?
    Edited by mcreddie at 27/01/11 @ 13:02

  • Grump #24 1 year ago

    This along with Uncharted are 2 examples of games that really don't need to be made into films. They're cinematic enough as they are!

    Film producers need to come up with their own ideas instead of looking for IP's to milk. No movie based on a game has ever interested me.

  • kangarootoo #25 1 year ago

    @Murton

    "I meant games have better scripts than the movies based on said games"

    Ah, fair enough. I'm not sure that is entirely true, but its certainly more likely I concede. I wonder though if that is not a "film writers are bad" thing though, so much as production companies thinking "gamers don't care about good writing - games themselves prove that much - so lets just spend a few quid on a script and focus on the specialfx".

  • waynenot #26 1 year ago

    Yeah, because it wasn't like a straight to video thriller at all, was it?

  • Bigglesworth #27 1 year ago

    @plugmonkey & @menange

    I assume you're exaggerating, right? You realise surely that the small scene of Lauren examining some trinket or other hides Shelby doing his murderin'? I agree though that it was still shabby and incredible* storytelling.

    * and not in the positive sense.

  • sonicyoda #28 1 year ago

    He's got a hard job on his hands. You've got to make me care about these characters without having the ability to control their actions. That's gonna be bloody difficult.

  • VibratingDonkey #29 1 year ago

    Why?

  • Bigglesworth #30 1 year ago

    @sonicyoda
    Most successful films across the history of cinema have achieved this.

  • PlugMonkey #31 1 year ago

    @Bigglesworth

    You made me curious, so I went back and watched the videos again on YouTube.

    My initial impression on first seeing the plot twist revelation was that it couldn't possibly have been Shelby, as he was in the other room at the time of the murder, and what I was being shown could not POSSIBLY have occurred.

    Going back and looking at the scenes again, with the benefit of fore-knowledge, you're right. He does actually go offscreen. But I'm also right. He couldn't possibly have done it.

    He is offscreen (although not out of the sight of the other character, but let's leave that for now) for 16 seconds before being back in exactly the same position again. 16 seconds for a man his size to cover 10 yards, club someone to death, and get back to the exact same spot without someone halfway across the room noticing him move? Improbable, certainly, but impossible? I guess not.

    However, 16 seconds for him to cover 10 yards, club someone to death, check his pulse, faff about in a filing cabinet, open a window, phone the police and wipe his prints off a phone in a sequence lasting 25 seconds? Yeah, that's not possible.

    So ultimately, my gut feeling of having been completely cheated was 100% accurate. Although my actual perception of Shelby being on screen the whole time is a classic example of why you can't rely on eye witness testimony, the basis behind that perception, of me being shown a version of events that couldn't possibly have taken place, and of a completely butchered narrative that made no sense whatsoever, was entirely correct.

  • PlugMonkey #32 1 year ago

    Pomphrey:

    I think you're over processing it. The simple truth is that 80% of movies made are adaptations. This is for the simple reason that you are much more likely to get your movie funded if you can point to an existing market for it - usually by linking it to a successful book, but also now by linking it to a successful videogame.

    It's not Hollywood trying to be a revisionist mouthpiece for a political agenda, it's purely about Hollywood being as risk averse as the video game industry is.

  • Kaminari #33 1 year ago

    Making a movie out of a poor videogame screenplay is not going to help the cause of "games are art".

  • mushroomyakuza #34 1 year ago

    This might actually be good.