NEWS - Thursday, July 5, 2001
Insight on Crazy Taxi movie
Sega of America announced on Monday that it has optioned the film rights to its popular Crazy Taxi driving game franchise to Goodman-Rosen. The production firm has in turn enlisted the services of Hollywood director Richard Donner, who has previously worked on such films as The Omen and Superman, among others. Following the announcement, GameSpot had the opportunity to speak with Jane Thompson, director of licensing and character development at Sega of America, about specific ideas being considered for the film, the early stages of the licensing deal, and the future of video game-based movies.
GS: Why choose Crazy Taxi?Be sure to click here to check out the rest of the insightful interview.JT: That is a question that has been coming up a lot. Certainly, something that is more character-based, like Sonic, Lara Croft, or Ulala, would be more logical. But it is one of those things where it just hit Richard Donner and he realized how fun this game was and the fact that it was a huge success. So, when you access the property and you are passionate about it, it kind of hits you in a visceral way, and I think that’s what happened here. I mean, there really weren’t one or two characters that stood out. They saw the humor and they saw the fun--the whole idea of Crazy Taxi. What everybody saw was that this is a fun and exciting game that could easily translate into a fast-paced and exciting movie. Also, it had an ensemble approach. There are a lot of characters, so you could certainly build an ensemble-type movie as well.
GS: What type of film has Donner envisioned with Crazy Taxi? Will it be an all-out action movie?
JT: Initially, we were really looking more into doing an all-out action movie, but as Richard Donner said, he doesn’t want to take a property and just make it into something that may be more driven by money than the value of the property. He is really committed to taking what is really exciting and successful with the games and translating it in a very interesting and different way into a movie. So, excitingly, I can say that they’re really looking at this from a different perspective than what you see out there in the action genre.
Source: http://www.gamespot.com/
