That Gears of War movie might finally come together. Universal Pictures has hired screenwriter Shane Salerno (Armageddon) to pen the script for the video game adaptation based on Microsoft Studios' beloved Xbox game franchise. Studios have been trying to crack an adaptation of the iconic game for near a decade now, but Universal only came aboard the project late 2016 and they seem to be making moves to finally get the movie on screens. Dylan Clarke (Patriot's Day) is producing for the studio.

For those unfamiliar, Gears of War is a military sci-fi third person shooter that centers on the soldiers of Delta Squad, originally soldier Marcus Fenix, in their last-ditch fight to save the human inhabitants of the planet Sera from an invasion of unstoppable subterranean creatures known as the Locust Horde.

Universal and Microsoft joined forces on the film adaptation in early October last year. At the time, Rod Fergusson franchise co-creator and head of Microsoft's game developer The Coalition, expressed complete support for the difference between the gaming and filmmaking process, suggesting that the film might create a new story from the existing lore rather than stick to a specific narrative of the games.

“I think you have to let the movies be the movies,” Fergusson said. “They’re two different mediums, and two different audiences in some cases, and I think some video game movies in the past have failed because they tried to make a movie for gamers. If you have this great IP with a deep backstory and lots of lore that you can make interesting stories out of it’s great, but if you just go after the gaming audience then it isn’t going to be a successful movie.”

Salerno previously penned the scripts for Michael Bay's Armageddon and Oliver Stone's Savages. Coming up, he wrote the screenplays for James Cameron's four upcoming Avatar sequels and Ridley Scott's adaptation of the acclaimed Don Winslow novel, The Cartel.