Sega Scores Rights to His Dark Materials

[soco]

From Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=68099):


SEGA has done a deal with New Line Cinema and Scholastic Media to create games based on the films of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials book trilogy.

For the moment that's all we know - there's no word on developer, target formats or release date, although the first film in the trilogy is due out in November 2007.

[holysin]

Today's Sega and a game based on a movie? That a recipe for disaster.

[jervo]

I've read the HDM books; they are fantastic. I'm sorta blah about the upcoming movies, although they've already whored this thing out as a theatrical musical version, so....

Point is, regardless of the developer, I'm not really sure that HDM is going to work as a game - certainly not if it features combat. If they make it an old-school, point-and-click adventure game, maybe it'd work. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother posting about a game (that I have no intention of playing) based on a movie (that I have no intention of seeing), but it's based on a book that I love dearly and I can't NOT put my 2 cents in.

[TrackZero]

Point is, regardless of the developer, I'm not really sure that HDM is going to work as a game - certainly not if it features combat. If they make it an old-school, point-and-click adventure game, maybe it'd work. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother posting about a game (that I have no intention of playing) based on a movie (that I have no intention of seeing), but it's based on a book that I love dearly and I can't NOT put my 2 cents in.

Sega doing an adventure game? Madness!! Though it's good to know at least the book source material is decent.

[Echani]

Oh.. dear god no. I'll keep my fingers crossed that they won't utterly rape my favourite trilogy of books, but I honestly don't see how they could make a good game out of them, unless it took the perspective of a completely peripheral character. And didn't involve any of the main characters. Or the main locales. In fact, I'd prefer if it had nothing whatsoever to do with HDM.

[BigJonno]

Probably have to do what I'm sure I'll end up doing with the films - screwing my eyes up, putting my fingers in my ears, going "la la la" and pretending it doesn't exist.

[menage]

Maybe they'll add loops, rings and f-ed up controls.

[Watership]

I can't wait to get the knife and slash through alternative earths and shit.

[Librum]

I read the trilogy and it seemed to be an interesting build up that ultimately went nowhere. I enjoyed them enough at the time, but they were utterly forgettable. Still, good fodder for a game, and plenty of flashy effects to make some movies, I suppose.

[Predation]

Got to love how the first dozen replies of people complaining that people working with good material will inevitably screw it up. Personally I try to keep a more optomistic attitude.

As for HDM, it will have to be a good movie because there is very little in the way of special effects going for the first book (aside from familiars, talking bears and a very big suprise at the end), so they will largely have to work purely with conceptual material. Which means they either have to hand creative control into a good director's hands, or have Phillip Pulman keep creative control. There isn't much special effects material to work with, so they have to go with the themes of the book or have an extremely bland movie.

In short, I don't see any possible way they could whore it up with special effects (at least for the first installment, the other two books on the other hand have plenty in outer-world stuff), and the only other alternative is to make an actually good movie.