Netflix has had a lot of success adapting video games into their own programming. Arcane, based on League of Legends, was a critical smash and won the Emmy for Best Animated Program this year. The Castlevania anime went through multiple seasons and a follow-up is in the works. Now here comes another entry: this time, it’s Gears of War.
Netflix announced they’re working with the GoW dev team, The Coalition, to bring Gears to life in both a live-action feature film and an animated series that would follow it. Both would be Netflix exclusives, and would lead to more Gears projects if successful. No directors or producers are attached as of yet.
Perhaps no other series exemplified the average XBox owner in the 2000s more than Gears of War: on a system known for big, loud, beefy, meaty bro shooters, this was the beefiest and bro-iest. It’s been a long time since its heyday and a lot about the gaming market has changed. For one thing, its original owner, Epic Games, washed its hands of the series long ago (but I hear they’re doing just fine these days). Microsoft has it now as a first-party property.
The big appeal of Gears of War, like with most 2000s male-dominated FPSes, was the multiplayer. If you ask your average GoW fan about the storyline in any game, you’ll likely get a blank stare. “Uh….you shoot a bunch of bugs?” Yet a Gears show, or a movie, would have to rely entirely on the story — such as it is.
Despite the basic premise, Hollywood has been toying with a Gears of War adaption ever since the first game was young. Universal Pictures and New Line Cinema have both had Gears movies on their slate at some point. If Netflix can commit, we could finally see Marcus Fenix rise from the ashes like a phoe–wait, I just got his last name.
