Monster Attack Game Rampage Becoming A Movie
More news in the world of “old-school video games becoming movies”: The Hollywood Reporter says New Line Cinema has acquired the rights to the 80s arcade game Rampage. The studio wants to “take advantage of the titles and visuals of the game,” whose objective was to raze cites as either George (giant gorilla), Lizzie (a giant dinosaur/lizard), or Ralph (a giant werewolf). The monsters were originally humans experimented on by Scumlab (they revert to human form when they take too much damage) and players level up by destroying as much as monsterly possible.
Like Asteroids, it’s kind of difficult to see how Rampage will come to the screen. It’s so simple that there are a lot of different avenues it could take, but the movie risks just becoming a generic monster movie (just as Asteroids seems to be becoming your standard alien invasion flick). It’s a video game where you control ripoffs of King Kong, Godzilla and the Roid-rage Wolfman to destroy cities across the country and world. That’s not to say it isn’t a fun scenario to play in an arcade game, but how will New Line do something interesting with it? I doubt originality was high on their priorities when they acquired the rights to a video game nobody really cares about anymore to try to cash in on whatever nostalgia exists for it.
There is that human mutant aspect of Rampage, though. Maybe there’s something there New Line can work with? It’s definitely something that’s never been done before, right? …right?
