Gamers love POP film, says Bruckheimer
"Women flipped" during test screenings.
Uberproducer Jerry Bruckheimer has said the new Prince of Persia film is a hit with test audiences.
That includes games journalists who are big fans of the series, he told Comingsoon.net. "They're so excited to see this and skeptical, to be quite honest. Skeptical we picked Jake and weren't sure if he was the right for the character," Bruckheimer said.
"But when they saw this, they got very excited. They all applauded at the end of it and felt it was true to what Jordan [Mechner] had originally created. They go back to his first game and were asking me questions about a game he created in '89... So they're really into this."
According to Bruckheimer, the POP movie is best described as "an old-fashioned, romantic adventure film". He added, "It's like a Lawrence of Arabia with this kind of supernatural element added to it. But it's really a wonderful biblical story about jealousy. It goes back to all the primal fears and conflicts through history, so it embellishes upon interesting things."
Bruckheimer has been showing the movie to test audiences for a few weeks now and it's scoring "extraordinarily high", apparently.
"It surprised me because I always think these things are going to fail, but this one turned out great," he said. "I was surprised, I thought we made a terrific movie for the boys, but the women flipped over this film... There is violence, it's PG-13, [but] parents rated the film 100 per cent excellent or very good which never happens."
In fact, Bruckheimer said, POP is doing better in testing than Pirates of the Carribbean did - but you never can tell. "Testing can be very... You don't know. I've had films test, nobody showed up. We did a movie called "Glory Road" which had enormous tests. We couldn't get people to go see it. It's a terrific film but nobody showed up."
The Prince of Persia film is due out in May 2010. You can watch the trailer over on Eurogamer TV.