There’s still some hope for seeing the war between humanity and the Locust finally brought to the big screen, as Universal Pictures has hired a new screenwriter for its Gears of War movie.
The studio has brought in xXx: Return of Xander Cage and Collide writer F. Scott Frazier to work on the screenplay for the film based on the popular game franchise, according to The Wrap. It’s unknown whether Frazier will be working on a new draft of the script or revising the script penned by Shane Salerno, the Avatar sequels’ screenwriter, who was hired in May 2017 to work on the film.
At this point, any news regarding the long-developing adaptation of the game franchise should probably be regarded with a grain of salt, as the project hasn’t made much progress since it was first announced back in 2016. Planet of the Apes franchise producer Dylan Clark and Gears of War co-creator Rod Fergusson are both still attached to the film as producers.
Early reports indicate that the Gears of War movie won’t adapt any particular game in the franchise, but will draw from the series as a whole for an original story.
First released for the Xbox 360 in 2006, Gears of War chronicled humanity’s struggle to survive against the onslaught of a subterranean species known as the Locust and the mutant offspring of their species. The series is set in the future, on an Earth-like planet named Sera, and follows various members of an elite military unit tasked with thwarting the Locust invasion and saving the last remnants of human civilization.
Over the course of five major installments of the franchise, the Gears of War series went on to become one of the most successful game franchises of all time for Microsoft and the Xbox consoles and became one of the most popular games on the Xbox Live multiplayer network. The most recent game in the franchise, Gears of War 4, was released in October 2016 and followed the son of original Gears of War protagonist Marcus Fenix, J.D. Fenix.
A fifth chapter in the series, Gears 5 is expected to hit shelves in 2019.
