EA: Army of Two movie on ‘a different path’ to games

EA: Army of Two movie on ‘a different path’ to games
Wesley Yin-Poole Updated on by

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The Army of Two movie will run on a “different path” to that of the games, EA has said.

In October last year the Army of Two movie was confirmed to be in the works at studio Universal, with Bourne Ultimatum writer Scott Z. Burns in charge of penning the script.

In the original report, Variety claimed that EA was “attached as a producer”, giving the US company “a whole higher level of involvement in how the end product turns out”.

However, speaking to VideoGamer.com, EA Montreal vice president and general manager Alain Tascan said that while EA was “working with” Burns, it was taking a hands-off approach to the creation of the script.

Tascan said: “We’re working together. We explain what the world is about, what the missions are about, and then we leave the guy to do his job.

“The way you tell a story in eight hours, 12 hours, and develop the characters, is completely different than two hours,” he added.

“We just give him our reference and then he’s working. We read a few parts of the script and it’s very promising. Obviously he has his own style, and we want to keep some big moments we had in the game, but it’s like, I don’t want to say parallel, it’s like a different path. He respects our world and we respect completely the movie, but we don’t want to attach the things together.”

Tascan said EA’s hands-off approach was in part due to lacklustre movies based on games that followed their source material too closely.

“So far, when movies try to really respect the games they’re not always the best quality,” he said. “That’s the truth. But we feel we have top quality partners as a producer and a writer, so hopefully we will have a top quality in the results.”

In the Variety report Burns revealed some interesting titbits on his approach to the script.

“The ambiguity of these private military corporations lends weight to an intelligent thriller with relevance to what’s going on in the world right now. You have contractors with their own agendas, and two guys whose friendship supersedes all the politics.

“I told EA right off the bat I wasn’t a gamer, and that appealed to them because they didn’t want to simply replicate the game.”

Army of Two: The 40th Day, developed by EA Montreal, is due out for Xbox 360, PS3 and PSP on January 8.

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