Lost Planet movie confirmed

At a press conference at E3 today, Capcom confirmed the forthcoming Lost Planet film which screenwriter David Hayter mentioned at last week's Anime Expo.

Hayter - the voice of Solid Snake, who wrote the X-Men movies and as the imminent adaptation of classic graphic novel Watchmen - will write the screenplay. The film will be produced by Arad Productions, the new company set up by former Marvel comics boss Avi Arad. Warner has the global distribution rights.

"This game has every ingredient that makes a great movie, from a reluctant hero to a betrayal," said Arad. "Games are now more story driven, they have main characters and villains, they have love stories and they have hope. Lost Planet is dealing in a very imaginative way with an issue that is very close to our hearts, which is energy."

"And it starts with an amazing name - Lost Planet feels like an instant classic. We feel like we've heard it before," Arad said. He explained that the spectacular vistas of a frozen world also drew him to the film.

Arad - who masterminded the rampantly successful Marvel Comics film adaptations of recent years, including Spider-Man and X-Men - said that they were aiming to release the film in 2011. He claimed this was an "aggressive" schedule for such a big project.

Hayter - who speaks Japanese and so can deal directly with the game's creators at Capcom - said, "This game makes a very real statement in terms of where we are at the world, what happene if energy supplies run low." He explained that he was a huge fan of John Carpenter's The Thing, and Lost Planet "offered me an oppportunity to dive into a world like that but a 1000 times bigger".

Keiji Inafune, Capcom's R&D head and the game's creator, revealed that Lost Planet had been designed with a film adpatation in mind from the very beginning.

"The main thing we wanted to do with the game was to create a game that would become a Hollywood movie," he said. "We wanted to create the exciting elements that would make a good movie, so we had the immense vistas of the ice planet, we had a love story and a story that also had intrigue.

"And we also had something that hasn't been seen in many Hollywood movies, something the Japanese are very good at, and that is giant robots." Hear hear.

Capcom president Haruhiro Tsujimoto said that film adaptations would form an integral part of Capcom's global strategy for creating games in future, and joined in a round of mutual back-slapping. "We also hope to work with Avi and his team in turning other properties of Capcom's into movies in the future," he said.

Nobody said that they wouldn't hire Uwe Boll as director, but we can probably take it as read.