Second Midway/Woo game cancelled?

By Robert Purchese Published 8 September, 2009

Gunrunner evidence mounts.

Action-film maestro John Woo may have been making another game for Midway called Gunrunner.

The publisher - now known as Tradewest Games after a recent buyout - wouldn't comment, but former staff hawking their wares were less tight-lipped.

The evidence, compiled by superannuation, begins with Sleepwalker|Media, which produced storyboards and CGI mock-ups for the project.

Those pre-visualisations of "Midway Games' prototype, Gunrunner" can be found on Sleepwalker|Media's website. They show a "Wow Moment", otherwise known as a car causing havoc in a busy city.

The blurb mentions emulating the style of the Bourne films, which apparently required the Midway team to "greatly enhance" the motion blur and depth-of-field capabilities of the Gunrunner engine.

No mention of John Woo yet, although a "Wow Moment" could be a "Woo Moment".

The next exhibit comes from the LinkedIn profile of Robert Morgan, who claims to have been a "tools/engine programmer on Stranglehold and Gunrunner" for Midway between 2005 and 2008. He now works for a gambling company.

Stranglehold, remember, was Woo's completed collaboration with Midway that we gave 8/10 to.

Our final exhibit is the resume of Chris de Priest, who claims to have had a lead animator position on "cancelled title Gunrunner" for Midway Games, between May 2008 and December 2008.

Gunrunner is a term referred to often in John Woo's work, particularly Hard Boiled, the film around which Stranglehold was based. Those dates also suggest the game was more up-to-date and perhaps advanced than we had thought.

Woo has recently finished and released epic war film Red Cliff across Asia. The story is based on a battle from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or the story of the reunification of China), but was received with little enthusiasm.

What he's up to now, no one seems to know. In 2007, John Woo and Warren Spector joined forces to simultaneously develop a film and a game called Ninja Gold. Nothing seems to have come of that, and Spector now focuses on what is believed to be Wii game Epic Mickey for Disney.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (11) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Aretak #1 2 years ago

    Stranglehold was terrible anyway, so I doubt this is any great loss to the industry.

  • lavalant #2 2 years ago

    ^^Stranglehold was a pretty good game, it had it's flaws but I was hoping a sequel would iron them out.

  • mingster #3 2 years ago

    I thought stranglehold was ok.

  • Fightclubber #4 2 years ago

    "The story is based on a battle from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (or the story of the reunification of China), but was received with little enthusiasm."

    Only the fact that it had the biggest film opening in the history of china and also got some of the best reviews of woo's career

  • Sonic_D #5 2 years ago

    Would like to have seen a seqeul to Stranglehold that dealt with some of the flaws, as Lavalant said. Was a fun game.

  • reelbigkris #6 2 years ago

    I enjoyed stranglehold, flawed, but it was ok. try WET if you enjoyed stranglehold. i personally hated the WET demo. once you give someone unlimited slow mo with no minor compromises for using it while also rewarding them by tripleing the rate of fire. whats the point?

  • Dr_Wadd #7 2 years ago

    I've only just got around to playing Stranglehold, and while I don`t think I would give it an 8 I thought it was a reasonably decent game. It was clearly trying to achieve something it never quite reached in terms of gameplay, but only missed the target by a tiny amount. If a sequel has been cancelled late in development that is potentially quite a shame as it would have given them a chance to get it really nailed this time around.

  • space_ace #8 2 years ago

    ...little enthusiasm

    о_O

    "red cliff" was awesome! so was "stranglehold"

  • mfolwell #9 2 years ago

    Ditto #5 and #10. Red Cliff was excellent.

  • Shikasama #10 2 years ago

    'Little enthusiasm'?

    Come on Rob, you're normally good at this journalism lark.

  • jambo74 #11 2 years ago

    You're a bit of a fool, ain't ya Shikasama?