Anna Daniels
Though the Crossfire board game was originally released in the early 1970s, ’90s kids will surely remember its ridiculous, over-the-top, and awesomely cheesy commercials with kids in leather jackets duking it out in the game while lightning flashed and an epic song played in the background.
Now Sony has decided to make a Crossfire movie, but it’s not a futuristic sci-fi feature set in a world where life or death is decided by who wins the game. (Where’s that movie, Hollywood?) Instead, the studio’s upcoming Crossfire movie is an adaptation of the mega-popular video game, which, not long ago, was the most-played game in the world.
Variety reports that Sony Pictures is teaming up with South Korean game developer Smilegate on the film adaptation. Neal H. Moritz, who produced many of the Fast and Furious movies as well as 21 Jump Street, Amazon’s The Boys, and dozens of other big projects, is on board as a producer. Chuck Hogan, who wrote The Strain alongside Guillermo del Toro, is writing the screenplay, and he has experience in this arena already, having penned 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi for director Michael Bay.
I’d never heard of this version of Crossfire before, but according to Wikipedia, it’s “a free-to-play first-person shooter that features two mercenary corporations named the ‘Black List’ and ‘Global Risk,’ fighting each other in an epic global conflict. Players assume the role of either a Black List or Global Risk mercenary, joining an online team that must work together to complete objective-based scenarios.” Each team is comprised of eight players, indicating that the movie adaptation will feature an ensemble in which multiple actors could make a lasting impact…assuming the script turns out well, of course.
First launched in 2007, the game was initially developed for Windows before expanding to additional platforms. Crossfire has 1 billion users in over 80 countries worldwide, and it has become one of the top-selling video games ever made. In China, the game was released by Tencent Games, and that company’s movie arm, Tencent Pictures, will co-produce and co-finance the film adaptation.
Moritz has been working on this for years; Smilegate spent an entire year mulling over offers from Hollywood before eventually deciding to partner with Moritz’s Original Films banner back in 2015, and the project hasn’t had any traction since. But it looks like Sony Pictures, which hasn’t been holding up super well in recent years, is interested in finally pushing adaptation this into production – probably to cash in on the game’s global appeal. Here’s hoping it works for them, because they need some hits and I don’t want to see them get swallowed up by a bigger entertainment conglomerate any time soon.
A new version of the game is coming out this year, and you can see the trailer below:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4XgMaT4Peg?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
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