Generation Xbox - How Videogames Invaded Hollywood - WC Movie Reference

W

Worf

Vice Admiral
Well, I was reading this book "Generation Xbox: How Videogames Invaded Hollywood" and came across an interesting background in the WC movie (if you have the book, it's pages 154-160).

The book's gist is about Videogames and movies - both as movies based on videogames, videogames based on movies, and video in games.

The WC section seems to have detail about the WC Movie in particular and while Fox gave Chris Roberts a free hand (they had little invested in it and were pretty disinterested), they didn't want to let it go. Fox was initially willing to let it go if their investment was paid off and they got a $2M profit from it. A deal with Sony was reached to buy out Fox's share and to give much needed extra time (Fox had a hard deadline, Sony was willing to delay its release). But just before the contract was signed, Fox killed the deal - they wanted the movie purely to be something to market Star Wars - The Phantom Menace, and it must be released in 6 weeks (with no marketing budget - it was to serve as the Star Wars marketing material).

An interesting read - I suppose I can try scanning the few pages if anyone is interested.
 
Yeah, I'm definitely interested in any WC movie stuff. I had some notions about the various deals with Fox etc, but there's always been some missing pieces ( a few of which we've filled in over the last couple of years).
 
Very interesting! I just ordered a copy, so I can take care of scanning/transcribing it for a CIC update.

My guess is they interviewed Chris and this is his, uh, current version of the history. I was there for some of this and can remember clearly the peroid where FOX wanted to delay the movie while Chris insisted they hold to their contract and get it out before Star Wars :) (Because he assumed it'd just never be released in that scenario.)
 
The sentence about the movie being released with no marketing budget because it was to serve as marketing material for Star Wars definitely suggests the quality of research (or writer's logic, or both) is pretty low...
 
Bandit LOAF said:
My guess is they interviewed Chris and this is his, uh, current version of the history. I was there for some of this and can remember clearly the peroid where FOX wanted to delay the movie while Chris insisted they hold to their contract and get it out before Star Wars :) (Because he assumed it'd just never be released in that scenario.)
Click to expand...

According to the book, it's the other way around. Fox wanted to release it (with Star Wars trailer), Chris wanted to delay it to fix up numerous issues. Sony agreed to the delay (in the end, it was perfect - Chris got his delay, Fox got its guaranteed profit, etc), but Fox killed it in the end. Sony was to release it the following year with a proper marketing budget.

And don't judge the book from my summary. I probably missed a bunch of details. I do recall it saying "The movie will be released in 6 weeks, and it will have the Star Wars trailer in it."

I bought this because I think I read an excerpt off Gizmodo about the Halo movie and ended up intrigued. Kinda sad it wasn't in ebook form so I could get it cheaper, but it was interesting enough to pay full price for it.
 
Yeah it's one of those things where I can absolutely imagine it's how Chris tells the story /now/. :)
 
Worf said:
I probably missed a bunch of details. I do recall it saying "The movie will be released in 6 weeks, and it will have the Star Wars trailer in it."
Click to expand...

They did a similar push on the first X-Men movie, where the film's post production was cut in half to allow it an earlier release.
 
My copy arrived in the mail and I read the Wing Commander part.

The movie part is very interesting. It's kind of strange, though, the book first cites Wing Commander III as being a "particularly cheesy" example of FMV game early on... and then heaps praise on its complexity when interviewing Chris Roberts.
 
I'd guess they mean that it is cheesy in regards to what is possible today, where at the time it was mind-blowing.

For the record, I personally don't think it was cheesy, but I can see how someone seeing it years later could think that.
 
Yeah, I didn't notice it back then either, but I think it really has a lot of cheese in it. I mean, there are cheesier ones in video game history, so in contrast it isn't that bad, but I always had the impression that Wing Commander liked to play with stereotypes and drama, which may be one of the reasons why the stories come across a bit cheesy. For me that's not necessarily a bad thing though.
You have to put it into perspective: Bollywood movies featuring Shah Rukh Khan are much cheesier and some people still like them. :D
 
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