Usually I’m quick to dismiss anything based on a video game as doomed to failure. I mean, I think there’s pretty good precedent when the best video game based movie ever made was directed by Paul. W.S. Anderson. The track record isn’t very good. But if there’s an exception that proves the rule (whatever the heck that means) then this is it.
Production Weekly reports that the video game “American McGee’s Alice” is on its way to being adapted into a feature film by screenwriters Erich and Jon Hober for director Marcus Nispel. It’s an all German crew! Don’t worry, they’re better at twisted horror/drama than they are at comedy. Better still, Sarah Michelle Gellar is attached to star (presumably as Alice) which if you ask me is just freakin perfect.
The game itself has a plot that sounds a little like Return to Oz but thankfully does not contain any tick tock men. An all grown up Alice returns to Wonderland after her parents are killed in a fire. But Wonderland isn’t the happy go-lucky place of beheadings we remember. In her absence things have succumbed to the madness, leaving Wonderland as a dark, disturbed, and threatening place.
Everything I’ve ever seen from the game is wickedly cool, and its material like this rather than say Doom or even Halo which should have an easy time breaking the video game movie curse. It’s easy to connect to, since we’re all familiar with the classic Alice story, and the game isn’t a basic shooter, which means plenty of already written story to draw from. No need to hire Dennis Hopper to provide de-evolving filler.
There’s no word on when filming will start on Alice, Sarah Michelle Gellar is ridiculously busy after her recent success in movies like The Grudge and Scooby Doo. It seems like she’s slated to star in just about every PG-13 horror movie currently in production. Luckily, she’s also doing some good things too. Sarah is about to start work in Donnie Darko creator Richard Kelly’s long awaited next project Southland Tales as well as an adaptation of a rather stale sounding novel called “The Girls Guide to Hunting and Fishing”.
