Videogame to movie adaptations used to be the realm of Paul W.S. Anderson and Uwe Boll, but now bigger names are taking a crack at doing it right. Peter Jackson is executive producing Halo and now Tim Burton may be directing a movie version of the game Grim Fandango.
The game was an adventure title released by LucasArts back in 1998. Critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful, the 3D title dips into the land of the Aztec afterlife to follow a character named Manny as he journey’s towards the final destination of all dead souls.
Burton’s affinity for the world of the dead is no secret, and a blog called Movie Center claims they have an interview with him in which he says a script called Grim Fandango may be his next project after Sweeney Todd. “I’m gonna start working on a new script that was sent to me recently: Grim Fandango,” he says. Note that he never says it’s based on the same named video game, but his description makes it sound a lot like the game: “It’s about a surreal land of the dead, some sort of purgatory where everyone goes when they die. In that place, dead people have to make a four-year transition before they can rest in peace for all the eternity.”
Burton also seems to indicate he’ll go claymation with it. “It sort of follows the style of The nightmare before Christmas and Corpse Bride,” he says. The Corpse Bride director says he doesn’t have a clear time frame for when he’ll start his Fandango project.
The rumor has yet to be confirmed, and since the interview is posted on a blog there’s a good chance it’s either plagiarized or completely made up. But if Tim Burton actually were to dip into the seedy and unsuccessful realm of videogame translations, this would probably be the one he’d start with.
Thanks to Danchuro for the tip.
