So word is out that Disney is going franchise crazy. I don’t know if that’s news of any kind, since about every other studio seems to be going for the same, but Disney has some fat ones right now: obviously, Pirates and Narnia.
Still, there’s no better way to augment existing franchises like bringing on the next, and it looks like Disney is very serious about making the Jerry Bruckheimer produced Ubisoft video game series Prince of Persia they picked up a while back.
Disney has distributed their investor report (always a good resource for new art for upcoming projects), and it’s chock full of Prince of Persia paraphenalia you see here (including the treatment above). If the artwork is any indication, this project looks epic.
The original game itself (upon which the franchise pilot is being based) is little more than jumping, grabbing and swinging interspersed with the occasional clanging sword battle and big-bosomed heroine cutscene… but, that "little more" adds up to a pretty entertaining game. If Prince gets the Pirate treatment and fleshes out the story of an an hourglass that changes time and turns the kingdom into zombies, I’ll go on record as prognosticating it will be a pretty entertaining movie as well.
The film is listed to hit in 2008 and that’s technically still two years off, so as fast as things are moving, it looks like Disney has every intention of hitting it. Whether it’s going for summer or fall, however, if there was ever a video game movie that has a chance of cracking the "video games + movies = crap curse", I’d say it’s this one.
Behold a sample of the artwork below and check out the rest here.
