August 29th, 2007 -- Written by John Campea
Ok, this is just the most ridiculous “so absurd, it’s totally awesome” news I’ve heard all week. It appears a movie has gone into development based on the ancient video game Joust! Yes that’s right… the game where you ride flying ostriches in knightly jousting combat. CATCH THAT EGG! This is just the stupidest news… and yet I’ve been grinning ear to ear like an idiot ever since I heard it.
Our friends over at FilmJunk give us this:
According to GameDaily, producers Christine Peters (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days) and Michael Cerenzie (Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Black Water Transit) recently formed a new company called CP Productions, with the specific intentions of making movies and comic books based on popular video games. For their first project, they have chosen the 25 year old arcade game Joust, which they are describing as “Gladiator meets Mad Max”.
Gladiator meets Mad Max?!?! I can just see it now… in a post apocalyptic world where there is no gas… cars are usless… there are only Ostriches for transportation and for bloody combat!
Man, I haven’t even THOUGHT about Joust in YEARS. I used to LOVE that game when I was a little kid. Flapping those stupid wings, killing the other knights. No one ever explained why you were flying an Ostrich over lava pits in the first place… but that was neither here nor there. A movie version of this is just the most silly idea… but I for one hope this actually comes to pass. In a world gone mad with Video Game movies… why not just go balls to the wall ridiculous?
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If they were serious about this movie it could hit epic scale or at very least something eyecatching and gritty.
I hope they dont camp this up or go all Dodgeball on the idea. Its a silly enough concept to REALLY give a different twist on a scifi and fantasy take!
fuck I hope this happens…..it would be awesome
What a way to start the day. That’s hilariously awesome news!
Have fun.
http://games.aol.com/arcade-classics?q=joust
That pteradactyl (sp) is viscious :)
I can’t stop laughing…
Ummmmm…..ostriches do not fly.
As far as video game to movies go, something like this is nothing short of brilliant. I can see nothing but advantages than disadvantages here. I’ll start with Terry’s comment.
1) It is the future. Genetically enhanced Ostriches can now fly and have a bad temper….Because they were tampered with.
2) It is an older [coin-op] video game. It does not have a story regarding individual Ostriches…er…I mean Jousters. There are no favorite characters for any fanbase to moan over or applaud ["They NEED to have the BLUE Jouster in the movie or its going to suck! He CANNOT remove his helmet and he MUST attend the stripper party after winning the tourney!!" In addition, when it is cast, no one will go off on this tangent "BUT...BUT... Morgan Fox is all wrong! She's hot but she looks NOTHING like the green jouster!]
The point is here we can give characters a ‘flashing out’ and names, see thier faces [looks like they wear ballcaps or eyegoggles of some sort?] with *zero* baggage.
3) That said, there is, in a story/script a *lot* of room for creativity, invention, imagination.
4) Could it be soaked in R rated Ostrich blood? It could be. Or, it could also be aimed for a PG rating, possibly tapping into a Narnia/Eragon audience?
5) It’s a better idea than Tempest.
6) I’m willing to bet some CGI house thought about it…
‘we done lions, tigers,sharks, aliens, bugs, wolves, bats…what animal haven’t we done yet? Any thoughts’
‘How about a mutated ostrich that can fly and there’s like a horse jockey riding it’
‘Someone writing a script for that old coin op game Joust, or something?’
‘Seems that way’.
‘I want to make a bad ass CGI mutant Ostrich! An egg hatching one too! Rider and all!’
‘We haven’t seen mutated Ostrich blood either’
‘Good point!’
Now, disadvantages.
1) Some new folks might know of Pac-Man and Galaga; but not Joust. Minor disadvantage, but someone is going to bring up “Oh, they won’t make a ‘Halo’ film, but they’ll make ‘Joust’?
2) Jousting. Sure, it’s in the air and on funky feathered Ostriches, but how to make it different each time?
3) If they do the comic book first and it doesn’t sell, what happens next? Will characters in the film be in or taken from said comic?
4) Should we get Uwe Boll or Neil Blompkamp?
I mean fleshing out.
only about 25 years too late with this one…were they sleeping all that time
Genetically enhanced ostriches. How could I have been so stupid lol. Call it Ostrich Riders of Pern. Next thing I will be told is that Joust was just a video game.
I loved Joust as a kid. I loved it so much that I still play it on Xbox 360 once in a while. And you want to know how many people I can find to play that game with my on Xbox LIve? Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That’s gotta translate to a gigantic FAIL in revenue.
Still, there’s gotta be something said about some dude flying a CGI ostrich battling swarms and swarms of Evil Assholes on Vultures, flying through a cavernous Thunderdome with lava pits. How are they going to fit in the Pterodactyl, I wonder?
Some character: (waving hands dismissively) Oh yeah, there’s a Pterodactyl, too.
Main character: (aghast) Whaaaat?
What kind of monster would it have to be to survive living in lava, I wonder? And see! It’ll reach right up and pull your ass down if you stray too close. Like Icarus.
This is going to be Snakes on a Plane levels of so-shitty-its-gotta-be-great marketing.
“And you want to know how many people I can find to play that game with my on Xbox LIve? Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. That’s gotta translate to a gigantic FAIL in revenue.”
It just occured to me that a new version of Joust could, in theory, come out on PC/MAC, PSP/XBOX just before the film is put in theatres. There’s no reason why not. Problem solved, Josh.
Madness knows no bounds in the movie world.
Oh my god, the commercial!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkcWfXpTcpw
See the epic!
“It just occured to me that a new version of Joust could, in theory, come out on PC/MAC, PSP/XBOX just before the film is put in theatres. There’s no reason why not. Problem solved, Josh.”
Ever play God of War 2? The scene of Kratos riding Pegasus across the earth, that was seriously a fun section of the game. So I believe that, at least, could be done.