Sony Pictures and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance co-director Brian Taylor have reached a preemptive, seven figure deal for Taylor to write a direct a live-action adaptation of Sony’s venerable vehicle combat series, Twisted Metal. The most interesting part of this news, aside from fans of the long-running series getting some live-action film treatment, is exactly how in the world Taylor will adapt all of Twisted Metal’s very, very dark themes and disturbing imagery into a film people can go see at a movie theater.
Aside from the overall question of how Taylor will deal with translation a vehicular combat game into a coherent movie, one wonders how he will treat the cast. The games feature an ensemble cast, most of which get an equal share in the spotlight. The “main” character, Sweet Tooth, is a serial killer dressed as a clown who drives an ice cream truck to improve his chances of abducting and murdering people. Oh, and he is cursed and his head is perpetually on fire and he can feel every second and every burn. One can’t help but wonder how much Taylor will focus the movie on that. Furthermore, there aren’t many true good guys in the series, as every character is extremely disturbed in some way, having committed various acts of extreme violence, murder, or even cannibalism.
The tidbits that have been disclosed have indeed revealed plans for Sweet Tooth, as well as Dollface, a young girl whose face was locked behind a porcelain mask. In the series, it is noted that because the mask was locked onto her head when she was younger, her head is growing too big for the mask and it is causing brain damage. Anyone who knows Twisted Metal will remember that she is one of the creepiest lunatics in all of video games.
As of now, the aforementioned disclosed tidbits have also revealed the movie will follow a similar plot of the games. The characters will enter into a vehicular combat contest and battle it out, and the winner will be rewarded one honest-to-goodness wish. In the series, those wishes are rarely even remotely positive, for instance, in Twisted Metal: Black, Sweet Tooth wishes to roam the streets once again, so he can hone his ice cream truck serial murdering craft. If you beat the game with him, he certainly gets that wish.
This will be Taylor’s first solo project, as he has always worked with Mark Neveldine, most notably on the Crank series. Hopefully, we’ll hear more about the Twisted Metal project sometime soon, because some of us really want to know how in the world that movie will be done in a way (if done right, of course) where it won’t be traumatizing.
(via Deadline)
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