Video game movies continue to trickle into our lives, and we are still waiting for that perfect one to make the big splash. Will Dead Rising: Watchtower finally be the one to get it right?
Sony Pictures has announced that the film will begin shooting this week, and it has certainly chosen a very enthusiastic director in Zach Lipovsky, a man taking inspiration from all the right places. Zombie films are totally played out after a rough decade, but in an interview with SlashFilm, he explains how his movie “brings a lot of new energy to the genre.”
“The idea that you can be bitten and remain human as long as you take your medicine every day is very interesting and dramatic. Similar to the social stigma of living with HIV. Another very cool element from the game is the zombies remember a little bit about their previous lives. There is something really haunting about seeing a zombie cop randomly firing his gun, or a zombie mom pushing a stroller.”
Meh, it’s not entirely original material for a zombie film to work with. The star of Dead Rising has never really been the undead but rather the insane weapons available through our hero’s ingenuity. Taping chainsaws to a broomstick and calling it a weapon, for example. He scores points in the reference category though by stating his movie will be tonally “like ‘Indiana Jones with Zombies’. Fun, scary, dramatic action.”
I’m sorry, but when I picture that, all I can see is Harrison Ford wearing a banana hammock swimsuit and Servebot head as a helmet. It’s not an image I want to replicate.
Lipovsky has a few B-films to his resume like a Syfy TV movie called Tasmanian Devils and Leprechaun: Origins, but it is Screenwriter Tim Carter who is the figure to be most excited about. His work as producer on the well-received Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series proves that genuinely good adaptations can be made while still being loyal to the video game source material.
Dead Rising: Watchtower’s cast includes:
- Jesse Metcalfe (John Tucker Must Die, Desperate Housewives, Dallas) plays the lead
- Meghan Ory (Once Upon A Time, Intelligence)
- Virginia Madsen (Sideways, Candyman, The Number 23)
- Dennis Haysbert (24, The Unit)
- Keagan Connor Tracy (Bates Motel, Once Upon A Time, Battlestar Galactica)
Any hope for Dead Rising: Watchtower? It doesn’t sound like Sony is going for anything serious with this film, and you probably shouldn’t take it seriously either. Just sit back and enjoy the schlock.
Source: SlashFilm