New Line Cinema Acquires Rights to Gears Of War
Los Angeles?New Line Cinema has acquired the feature film rights to Epic Games' award-winning video game, Gears of War?, with writer Stuart Beattie attached to adapt the project and Temple Hill Entertainment set to produce. The announcement was made jointly today by New Line Production President Toby Emmerich and Epic Games' VP and co-founder Mark Rein.
Since its debut in November 2006, Gears of War has broken sales records on Xbox 360?, selling more than three million copies worldwide, and has received numerous awards including Gamespot's "Game of the Year" and the Interactive Achievement Awards' "Overall Game of the Year."
Beattie previously penned Collateral, and is credited with the screen story for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He has also written the screenplay for 30 Days of Night and 3:10 To Yuma, a film staring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Cliff Bleszinski, the lead game designer for Gears of War, worked in conjunction with Beattie to define a treatment for the film, which will target existing fans of the video game and captivate a whole new audience. Bleszinski will executive produce the film on behalf of Epic Games.
Gears of War is being produced by Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey (iRobot, Daddy Day Care) through their Temple Hill Entertainment production company. The project is being overseen for New Line by production executives Cale Boyter and Jeff Katz.
Creative Artists Agency represents Beattie, Bleszinski, and Epic Games. Beattie is also represented by Joan Vento-Hall of the Law Offices of Joan Vento-Hall.
New Line Cinema Corporation
Celebrating its fortieth anniversary year, New Line Cinema is the most successful independent film company in the world. Its mission is to produce innovative, popular, and profitable entertainment in the best creative environment. In addition to the production, marketing, and distribution of theatrical motion pictures, the fully integrated studio has divisions devoted to home entertainment, television, music, theater, merchandising, and an international unit.
In 2005, New Line partnered with HBO to form Picturehouse, a new theatrical distribution company to release independent films. A pioneer in franchise filmmaking, New Line's Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings trilogy is one of the most successful film franchises in history. New Line is a division of Time Warner, Inc.