UGO and a few other select outlets were flown down to New Mexico to visit the set of (depending on who your source is) Game, The Game or The Untitled Gerard Butler Action Pic. I’m sure we’ll know by 2009 when the movie comes out. It was nighttime when we arrived at the set, which was an outdoor BMX bike park. The cast and crew were on their first day at this location and they’d been there since the crack of dawn. Everyone seemed pretty casual, despite the rigorous work. Though Gerard Butler and the other cast members looked like boys out there playing in the dirt with guns and blowing stuff up, the work had to be grueling.
The Game’s story is reminiscent of The Running Man or eXistenZ or even a little Blade Runner, but upgraded for MMOs. It is a futuristic action/thriller set in 2017 with Gerard Butler starring as Kable, the champion of an online game called “Slayers”. Mind-control technology has taken society by storm and “Slayers” allows humans to control other humans in this large-scale, multiplayer online game. Kable is in a privatized prison and thinks he’s going to get out after surviving 30 fights. However, he soon learns that his every move is being tracked by millions and he is just an avatar. Kable’s primary challenge becomes regaining his identity and taking down the system that has imprisoned him.
The film is being shot with something called the Red One camera, which is able to record resolutions up to 4520 x 2540 using a Super 35-sized CMOS sensor. It’s priced at around $17,500, which is a really reasonable price, particularly for lower-budget productions that want their films to look spectacular. Created by Jim Jannard, it records an amazing 4k in 4 minutes. When we watched the takes on the set, it was like watching HD dailies because of the way that this amazing camera films. Game is one of the first films to use this technology, and I’m sure they won’t be the last since a new one is coming out that shoots 2K and will only cost $3,000.
Visual effect supervisor, James McQuaide, spent quite a bit of time speaking with us about the new technology being used for the film. He was a very cool guy who had a sparkle in his eye about the production. He told us that all of the big screens hanging around were going to be for advertisements, moving hieroglyphics, in the virtual world, similar to Blade Runner. There are also ball bearings that follow the characters around that have to be manipulated with cable. Basically, the effects are off the chain. With CGI inserted in every scene, the film promises to look spectacular.
VP of Lakeshore Marketing, Robert Burke, also chilled out with us and gave us a little insight into the production. He told us for the previous three weeks they’d had downtown Albuquerque set up as Container City, where the first battle scene of the movie takes place. By the time they were done, those four vacant lots downtown looked like a war zone on CNN.
The Game is written and directed by Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine, the guys who made Crank with Jason Statham. The budget of The Game is Lakeshore’s largest to date, at $40 million. Besides Gerard, Logan Lerman (3:10 to Yuma), Alison Lohman, John Leguizamo and Michael C. Hall have crucial roles. With an intriguing storyline, innovative special effects and a great cast, this could prove to be Lakeshore’s best, highest-octane film yet.