Brad Pitt plunging into 'Dark Void'

By Steven Zeitchik

“Dark Void” will yield development matter.

Indian giant Reliance BIG Entertainment and Brad Pitt’s Plan B shingle are developing a film version of the upcoming video game, and Pitt could well star as the lead combatant.

The two firms have acquired rights to the Capcom third-person shooter and will develop as a feature. The companies say that the project would be a “potential starring vehicle” for Pitt. No writers have been hired as yet.

“Void” centers on a a cargo pilot named Will (Pitt’s presumed character) who, after crashing in the Bermuda Triangle, ends up in a parallel universe where a band of humans must fight an alien threat they had long been thought extinct. Will and the other humans are outmanned but have a number of weapons and powers to help them beat back the alien incursion.

The game will be released for Windows, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 in January. CAA repped Plan B and Reliance in the deal; UTA repped Capcom.

If it becomes a full-fledged film, the project could potentially be made via Reliance’s financing pact with Dreamworks and/or distributed through Dreamworks’ output deal with Disney, though no formal decisions have been made on either as yet.

The project is the first to come out of a development partnership between Plan B and Reliance that was announced at the Festival de Cannes in 2008. The Indian giant has deals with a number of other Hollywood production banners, including Julia Roberts’ Red Om and George Clooney’s Smokehouse.

Video games have had a mixed record on the big screen, with title likes “Max Payne” mutating into critical and commercial flops. But principals here pointed to advantages a “Dark Void” movie would have that its predecessors have not.

“As a game, Dark Void was developed with a wide-screen mentality – a world full of adventure presented in cinematic scope and scale,” Capcom senior v-p of licensing Germaine Gioia said.

Comments

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I played the game recently and came away unimpressed, the controls felt really awkward, it may have been an early demo but I couldn't help but come away thinking it was going to be another Bionic Commando. I really hope it's not.