Just as long as the dog's in it.
Following the success of Sonic the Hedgehog, and no doubt with an eye on the huge popularity of FX’s Shogun series, Deadline has reported that a Shinobi movie is in the works. The series began in 1987 with a side-scrolling arcade game and would find big success with sequels on the Mega Drive / Genesis, but barring a couple of (fairly good) PlayStation 2 entries in the early 2000s, and a forgettable 3DS game in 2011, Shinobi has not been a part of the gaming landscape for some time.
That is going to change: Sega is currently developing a Shinobi reboot, with leaked footage showing a traditional side-scrolling action game with a lovely art style. The film however is apparently loosely based on the original arcade game’s plot, which featured ninja Joe Musashi fighting the Zeed terrorist group, who for some reason are kidnapping all his students.
Plenty of blanks for writer Ken Kobayashi to fill in, then. Kobayashi’s written for shows including Hit-Monkey and Moonfall, while his screenplay Move On is currently in development at Columbia.
Sam Hargrave is signed on as director. Hargrave previously directed the two Extraction movies for Netflix: the first is the most-watched original film in the platform’s history, with the sequel also enormously popular. He’s also directing Mattel’s Matchbox film and Paramount’s quaintly titled Kill Them All, so a brand tie-in about stabbing lots of dudes with a katana seems like a good fit for his oeuvre.
There are also a whole cavalcade of producers attached: Marc Platt, Adam Siegel, Dmitri M. Johnson, executive producers Mike Goldberg and Timothy I. Stevenson, and Sega’s Toru Nakahara.
Videogame movies are all the rage now that Hollywood’s managed to make a few decent ones and seen the potential returns. As well as the Sonic series of films, which has a third entry incoming, the big success in recent years was the $1.4 billion gross of The Super Mario Bros. Movie. OK there’s been a Borderlands or two along the way, and who knows which side of the fence Shinobi will end up on. But I do hope they get the dog from Shadow Dancer in there somehow.
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