RSA to produce DRIV3R film short
That's "Ridley Scott Associates". See, you did care!
Atari is claiming another "convergence first" this week with the announcement that Ridley Scott Associates (RSA), the commercial production company owned and run by filmmakers Ridley and Tony Scott, has produced a three-minute live-action film inspired by DRIV3R.
The film short, dubbed "The Gauntlet", will be released over the next three months at www.driv3r.com in three one-minute episodes, each of which will be preceded by a pair of thirty-second vignettes. The first of these will appear on January 13th and 19th respectively, with Episode I appearing in full on January 23rd. Episodes II and III should appear during February and March respectively.
The Gauntlet, written and directed by RSA's Sean Mullens, is currently in post-production. Atari wants the plot to remain secret, but the film is obviously inspired by the characters, story and presumably locations - Miami, Nice and Istanbul - seen in DRIV3R.
The publisher is placing a lot of faith in RSA, which was responsible for the original series of short films on BMWFilms.com, and aims to use The Gauntlet as a core component of its promotional activities both online and off.
Of course this isn't the first time that Atari has tried to blur the line between game and motion picture. Despite a widespread critical panning, its Enter The Matrix title was noteworthy for its role in fleshing out the back-stories of several key characters in 2003's The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions.
DRIV3R, developed by Atari's Reflections Interactive studio, is due out in March on PlayStation and Xbox with a PC version to follow later in the year.