Need for Speed

ACT OF VALOR Director Scott Waugh to Helm NEED FOR SPEED

by Adam Chitwood    Posted: May 23rd, 2012 at 11:10 am

Last month we learned that Electronic Arts and DreamWorks were teaming up to bring the popular video game franchise Need for Speed to the big screen.  Real Steel scribe John Gatins was tapped to develop a pitch for the film, and now Variety reports that Act of Valor director Scott Waugh is in talks to take the helm.  Gatins developed the pitch alongside his brother, George, who is the sole credited writer on the screenplay.  The film is planned as a potential tentpole in the vein of the Fast and Furious franchise, and with that series switching to the heist genre with the upcoming Fast and Furious 6, Need for Speed should fill the void for street racing fanatics.

You’d be forgiven for mistaking Act of Valor for Call of Duty: The Movie, so Waugh seems an appropriate choice to adapt the Need for Speed video game series.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he brings the POV camera style from Act of Valor to Need for Speed, in which case I’ll most likely be in need of a vomit bag when watching the film.  Waugh is also attached to direct Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Unknown Soldier.

NEED FOR SPEED Headed to the Big Screen

by Adam Chitwood    Posted: April 12th, 2012 at 2:57 pm

Though board game adaptations are a recent trend, Hollywood has been adapting video games for years.  The latest title to get a go on the big screen appears to be the racing series Need for Speed.  Showblitz reports that screenwriter John Gatins (Real Steel) has been tapped to develop a pitch for a big screen iteration of the popular game franchise.  Electronic Arts and UTA are now going out to Hollywood studios to shop the project around, and Warner Bros., Sony, and Paramount are said to be interested in the deal.

The Need for Speed series began in 1994 and has had a fruitful run on multiple platforms ever since.  Given that the game simply consists of racing cars in different settings, studios are really only buying the title recognition.  Someone could just as easily have written a movie set in the street-racing world and slapped the Need for Speed title onto it.  Nevertheless, studios like to make money so I have no doubt in my mind that we’ll see Need for Speed on screens sooner or later.  Battleship is an actual movie that exists, after all.

NEED FOR SPEED: SHIFT PS3 Review

by Clayton Stone    Posted: September 30th, 2009 at 9:55 am

The Need for Speed franchise has survived many low points over the last few years. Silly additions and subtle changes made to each iteration of the series have pushed the well-known brand further into mediocre and sometimes downright awful territory. For their latest release, Electronic Arts went back to the drawing board, and handed over the reigns to developer Slightly Mad Studios, which had experience crafting the award-winning racing franchise, GTR. What a smart move that was. Need for Speed SHIFT not only revitalizes the franchise’s name, it revolutionizes some aspects of the racing genre, providing gamers with a palpable sense of what it actually feels like to get behind the wheel of the fastest cars on the planet. Find out why, after the jump.

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