Bruckheimer’s gamer films Alien Legion and Gameboys still in the works

By Stephany Nunneley

Looks like the rumblings over Jerry Bruckheimer making two films based  around videogames has started shaking the stratosphere again.

While no word has been heard on either film for quite some time, i09 sat down with Alien Wars’ screenwriter Eric Heisserer, who confirmed that things were still moving along.

Rumors in the past have stated that Alien Wars was based on an adaption of the Alien Legion comic book, but Heisserer doesn’t seem to think so.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with the old comic book called Alien Legion”, said Heisserer, who penned the draft for Alien Wars.

As far as Alien Wars goes, the name has been changed to Gameboys and it is not a revamp of The Last Starfighter.

“[It] was a Bruckheimer answer or version to The Last Starfighter,” he offered.

“The last I’d heard they brought Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 3 & 4) to do a rewrite on that.

“It was a tough choice — it was a difficult project for Bruckheimer, because it was a huge budget movie that starred High School students. And this was before Twilight came out, to prove that you’d be all right doing something like that.

“I think it made them very nervous. Any movie where the hero wasn’t someone that could be played by Nic Cage, I think scared them”.

Heisserer goes on to reaffirm that Alien Wars is not a sequel to The Last Starfighter, nor a reboot, but more or less Bruckhiemer and co.’s take on it.

In it, the main characters are thirtysomething gamers who discover the game they are playing is real and are brought in by the government to “to lead a geeky army of gamers in a battle” against the creatures that have come to life.

Bruckheimer is also still working on the  Alien Legion film as well, according to his rep who spoke with i09.

The rep also confirmed that Gameboys/Alien Wars is an original idea and not a revamp of The Last Starfighter. [-I guess they can’t make that clear enough, ed.]

Gameboys is expected sometime next year, and Alien Legion is slated for a 2013 release.

Until then, there’s always The Prince of Persia movie.

Thanks, GoNintendo.