Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time might end up being the the most successful movie based on a video game when it releases this year. Speaking at Wondercon, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Mike Newell, actor Jake Gyllenhaal and Prince of Persia series creator Jordan Mechner talked about bringing the property to the big screen.
“I think Jerry and I felt that it was going to be a very important thing that he and I should feel the same about it,” said Newell [thanks Gamasutra]. “We should feel good about it. This was not going to be a postmodern tone, by which I mean you do something heroic, you turn to the camera, and you wink. We didn’t want that at all.”
Both Newell and Bruckheimer admit they aren't much for gaming, though the producer credits Mechner for the project finding its proper voice. “Considering this started with a character on the Apple II computer which was 40 pixels high, to go from that to Jake [Gyllenhaal] is pretty incredible,” said Mechner, who went on to describe the development process of the original game, “I was right out of college, I was home for the summer, and I loved movies. I was inspired especially by the 1940s swashbuckling movies like Thief of Baghdad.”
Gyllenhaal gave some cheeky remarks when asked about his character, saying that the Prince likes jumping and princesses, and he noted that he took recreating the roll seriously, even learning some parkour. “I started from the outside first,” he said. “I am a really physical person, and pretty athletic, so I started training pretty early for the part.”
Mechner said that the game's setting in the One Thousand and One Arabian Nights universe made it ripe for a movie and that “as much as I love video games, not every video game should become a movie.”
While Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time might be among the biggest blockbusters of the Summer, it won't be coming out in 3D, and Bruckheimer explained why. “At the time Avatar hadn’t come out,” said Bruckheimer. “At the time we went to Disney and said we’d like to do it in 3D, and for whatever reason it was really costly. And the cameras at the time weren’t as advanced as they are today.”
