max-payne-movie posts

It's been just over a month since the film adaptation of Max Payne was released to theaters but the movie, based on Remedy's action game series, will have a fast turnaround for its DVD and Blu-Ray release. According to High-Def Digest the film will be released for both disk formats on January 20, a little over three months after its release to theaters.

The movie, starring Mark Wahlberg as the title character, will apparently come in both rated and unrated formats with extras like a director's commentary, deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage and more. The Blu-Ray release will also have a picture-in-picture track and BD-Live connectivity.

It's been a long, long time but developer Remedy has finally updated the official web site for their long awaited mystery-adventure game Alan Wake. While there's actually no new info on the game itself there are some brand new screenshots posted on the site (which we have reproduced here)

The new screenshots definitely show some improvements in visuals over the last screenshots that were released over two years ago but they still retain that X-Files/Twin Peaks influence in the game's art design and themes. In a post on the game's official message boards, Remedy states the screenshots were taken from the PC version of the game in 1080p resolution but cut down to 720p for posting on the web site.

The web site also has the much promised trailer that was first shown in Remedy's native Finland before showings of the Max Payne movie. Unfortunately as of this writing the trailer cannot be viewed or downloaded from the site (too much traffic perhaps?) We hope to have a local version of the trailer available for all of you to download soon. In the meantime the release date for Alan Wake is still "when it's done"

Now that the Max Payne movie is out in theaters and apparently bringing in decent box office receipts, one of the people instrumental in bringing the original game to life has said some rather critical things about the movie adaptation.

In speaking to Edge Online, 3D Realms head Scott Miller (who helped to develop the original game with the team at Remedy) stated he "could go on and on" talking about the issues he had with the Max Payne movie, from story points to character development to narrative structure. Miller says, "A big problem with the film is that we do not really know what is driving Max until we see the flashback scene showing him coming home and finding his family murdered. In the game, we put this scene right at the front of the story for a reason! Saving this scene until mid-film is a narrative blunder, because the audience needs to empathize with Max in order to like him and understand what drives him."

Even though the movie got mostly poor reviews from critics, movie goers still wanted to see Max Payne make the transition from Remedy video game to Twentieth Century Fox feature film. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com the film topped the US box office in its debut weekend, earning a solid but not spectacular $18 million.

Max Payne's revenues beat out Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua who had been atop the box office for the past two weekends in the US. It's main competition, the Oliver Stone docudrama W., only managed to make $10.5 million for the number four spot. Max Payne's credit sequence sets up a possible sequel but the question is will the movie's $18 million debut be enough to justify a follow-up?

Anyone who had hopes that the film adaptation of Remedy's Max Payne action game series would break the usual "crappy video game movie" formula is likely to be disappointed yet again. The film has apparently been kept from viewing by the nations movie critics until the last possible minute by its studio Twentieth Century Fox (it's due in theaters Friday) but some early reviews are not encouraging.

The Hollywood Reporter's review says the film is more style and substance, saying, "For lovers of cinema, however, the title reads "Maximum Pain.'" Variety's review is a little more charitable but ultimately says, "it's not nearly as much fun as actually playing the game." Aint It Cool News is especially harsh on the movie, saying, 'The damn thing's 85 minutes and you swear you've been in there for about two and a half hours by the time it's over. "

It's been over three years since the first announcement about Alan Wake, the action-adventure thriller game from developer Remedy. You would think that they would have a lot to say about the game by now but a new Q&A over at 1Up.com with its writer Sam Lake says little that is new about the title

Lake states, "Alan Wake remains true to the original vision of the game, but we are still fine-tuning different elements, making sure that this will be a best possible realization of that vision." He does say that the game is structured like a season 1 DVD of a TV show with separate episodes, cliffhanger endings and a supporting cast around the title character. We can expect to see a new trailer for the game in the next few days as Remedy created a new one for the Finnish theatrical release of the Max Payne movie.

It's been over two years since the last media was released for Alan Wake, the long-in-development action-adventure game from developer Remedy. That happened to be a trailer shown during Microsoft's E3 2006 press conference announcing their deal to publish the game. Now a Finland based web site is claiming that a new Alan Wake trailer will soon be released.

This site claims the trailer will be shown in movie theaters on the weekend of Oct.17 before showings of Max Payne, the film version of Remedy's last game franchise. This trailer will only be shown in Finland theaters (Remedy is based in that country), but so far there's no real evidence if this will even happen.

[Via Xbox360fanboy]

Earlier this month we reported that the upcoming movie version of Remedy's Max Payne action game series was in danger of getting an R rating which would almost certainly cut into the box office take of the film. Now our sister site Game Daily has posted up word that the Motion Picture Association of America has finally given the film a much more mainstream PG-13 rating.

Game Daily spoke with the film's director John Moore who said he "didn't have to change much" to get the final PG-13 rating for the Mark Wahlberg flick. He added, "I think it's as effective a video game movie you're ever going to see. I think getting an R rating or not doesn't impact the movie one bit." The film is still due in theaters on Oct. 17 and Moore said he's even thinking about a sequel if the first does well, saying, "I think in the movie there are enough loose ends to maybe make Max realize that it's not all over."

Xbox 360 and PS3 users have worked themselves into a veritable tizzy over downloadable content, but PC users have been accustomed to having the lifeline of their favorite games extended far past their in-the-box values since the days of Doom - and even before that. What's more, we're used to downloading new levels, weapons, characters, and new episodes absolutely free of charge.

Big Download understands that a five-hour game can be extended by hundreds of hours via total conversions, brand new monsters, and weapons you've always wanted to see in your favorite title. In the spirit of extending a title's longevity beyond mere out-of-the-box expectations, MODmonday celebrates the best modifications for games new and old. Half-Life, Half-Life 2, StarCraft, Diablo II, Doom and more will all be represented here, ensuring a wide spread of mods available across every possible genre of PC gaming.

This week's MODmonday modification is True Matrix, a mod that inserts several elements of the original The Matrix movie into the original Max Payne. Stay tuned to MODmonday over the next several weeks as we count down until the release of the Max Payne movie on October 16 by covering the best mods for Max Payne and Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne.

A number of years ago, at the height of Duke Nukem 3D's popularity, the movie rights to 3D Realms' first person shooter were taken up by Threshold Entertainment, best known for making the Mortal Kombat films. However those plans never came to fruition. Now Kotaku is reporting that Depth Entertainment, one of the production teams behind the upcoming Max Payne movie is working with 3D Realms to finally get a Duke Nukem film off the ground.

Kotaku reports that Depth Entertainment founder Scott Faye is working with 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller on the Duke Nukem movie project but it sound like it's still in the very early stages. No writer or director has been revealed and Faye won't be shopping the project to any movie studio "until all the people involved in the project feel solid about where we are creatively." Faye states, "We're expanding Duke's 'storyverse' in a very significant major way without abandoning or negating any element that's being used to introduce Duke to the next gen platforms."

Faye is also one of the producers of the long-in-development-hell movie adaptation of American McGee's Alice. The film has apparently lost the support of its announced star Sarah Michelle Geller and a new script is currently being written. As far as Max Payne's release, Faye states that Twentieth Century Fox will be putting a lot of marketing muscle behind the film and that both its star Mark Wahlberg and director John Moore would be interested in a sequel if the first film does well enough. Max Payne is due for release in theaters Oct. 17.