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Mechwarrior Movie


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#1 Bushrat

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Posted 19 April 2019 - 04:27 PM

Well, its been a few years since this topic was raised, its time to raise it again..

I WANT A MECHWARRIOR MOVIE!!

I think it'll have to be b-list actors, but with awesome CGI, perhaps following the story of a Merc unit? Who owns the movie rights? Why haven't they engaged an agent to shop the idea around Hollywood? Or have they?

I think it would increse the prestiege of the franchise no matter how succesful it would be, adding more players and that would be great for everyone.

#2 Bombast

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Posted 19 April 2019 - 05:01 PM

As I recall, there's an executive at Disney who privately owns the movie rights to Battletech/Mechwarrior. However, since he doesn't have the merchandising rights, good luck with that.

#3 Koniving

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Posted 19 April 2019 - 08:54 PM

The sad state of selling off franchise rights.

Pity Jordan didn't do what the Warhammer group did...
sub-license the living hell out of it... allowing both good and bad things to pop up.



#4 Steel Raven

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 11:04 AM

View PostBombast, on 19 April 2019 - 05:01 PM, said:

As I recall, there's an executive at Disney who privately owns the movie rights to Battletech/Mechwarrior. However, since he doesn't have the merchandising rights, good luck with that.



That was never said to be the case. People made that connection because Saban Entertainment produced the Battletech Animated series and Disney bought Seban to get the rights to certain shows. Disney bother retaining the rights to all of Seban shows because the company was only really interested in a few money makers (spoil alert, Battletech wasn't one of them) and I honestly don't think Disney even cares about Battletech.

Mainframe Entertainment (befor they became Rainmaker) had intrest in making a new Mechwarrio cartoon when the Wiz Kidz Click game was still making money but it never went anywhere beyond concept art. Most likely due to the poor performance of the Heavy Gear series earlier.

On top of it all, thats just the rights to the Battletech cartoon. Dean Devlin was championing a Battletech/Mechwarrior movie for years but he is apparently the only man in Hollywood who seems to have any interest in the series.

Edited by Steel Raven, 20 April 2019 - 11:06 AM.


#5 Koniving

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 04:11 PM

The main issue is the universe is huge, and the interest isn't. This is largely because many don't even know it exists and MWO makes a piss poor representation of it. In order to really get attention it needs something more than obscure books. But a movie is 1) too high budget and 2) too short to really get anywhere.

If anything, I think Battletech needs a game outside of just the mechs to show that there's more there than just the mechs.
In the mean time, an animated series wouldn't hurt.

Anyway even if one did a movie, what could it focus on well enough to hold interest for an hour and a half at most?...and still fit a cohesive story with an end?

#6 GuardDogg

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 04:15 PM

Hollywood can come out with endless amounts of Transformers movies, but can not come out with a Battletech movie.

#7 Steel Raven

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 05:26 PM

View PostGuardDogg, on 20 April 2019 - 04:15 PM, said:

Hollywood can come out with endless amounts of Transformers movies, but can not come out with a Battletech movie.


Transformers is a good example of why we wouldn't want Hollywood anywhere near the BT property. Hollywood has a awful history with game properties (Doom, Resident Evil, Warcraft, ect.) and love to copy existing successful franchises so anyone pitching a BT movie will probably get answer with 'Maybe if we do what Bay did with Transformers...'

Forget Hollywood, ask for a game with a better story.

#8 MechaBattler

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 08:06 PM

There's not even interest from other studios to do a mechwarior/battletech game. Jordan was the original creator and he'd been considering doing Crimson Skies instead. So hard to see anyone doing a movie. And a show would be too low budget to be any good. Maybe if say Netflix wanted to do an animated show and felt like battletech/mechwarrior had potential. They've been doing more animated stuff of late and adding more animes. So who knows. Hollywood is adapting a lot of books lately, so maybe if we could get some new books to sell well..

#9 Koniving

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 08:47 PM

If Hollywood got ahold of Battletech; the following would be true.
  • The men would be pansies, except the token LGBT community character.
  • The women would be characteristically male in all but appearance....which butch women were actually a kinda common thing in BT...
  • It might actually still not have enough visual diversity in its character races to properly represent the universe...
  • Someone is going to have Mary Sue syndrome and a mech that can somehow overpower things twice its size or greater.
  • They will represent the cockpits incorrectly, and depict the transparent armor as glass.
  • The movie will be a guaranteed commercial failure if it doesn't have at least a single reference to bad intelligence.
  • Steiner's bad tactical decisions in the movie will actually make them out to be smarter than they really are...
  • ACs will fire single shots because the amount of research they'd do is play 3 minutes of Mechwarrior Online.
  • When there actually is mech versus mech action, we won't be able to see anything because... (Michael Bay)
And if the reviews of Left Alive is any indication (20 of the 30 reviews have no idea what franchise it was to, "the mechs look nothing like armored core"...)
Then most of the people criticizing it will probably have no idea what Battletech even is.

Then again, Silent Hill is a good example as to why Hollywood should stay the **** away from some things.
Basically everything... and extra "why did you **** this up" with Vincent.
Also:
(SH 1: Snowing in July.)
(The three Western SH games after the movie: Coal ashes.)

Quote

Harry: Do you work here?

Man: I'm Doctor Michael Kaufmann. I work at this hospital.

Harry: So maybe you can tell me what's going on.

Kaufmann: I really can't say. I was taking a nap in this staff room. When
I woke up, it was like this. Everyone seems to have disappeared.
And it's snowing out, this time of year. Something's gone
seriously wrong. Did you see those monsters? Have you ever seen
such aberrations? Ever even heard of such things? You and I both
know creatures like that don't exist.

Harry: Yeah.
Have you seen a little girl anywhere? I'm looking for my daughter.
She's only seven. Short. Black hair.

Kaufmann: She's missing? I'm sorry. But with all those monsters around, I
highly doubt that she's...

Harry: (sighs))


#10 Karl Streiger

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Posted 20 April 2019 - 09:56 PM

From a point of view that don't knew the Transformer franchise I really liked the Transformer Movies with exception of this lame part 4 the reason nobody went to cinema to watch part 5, on of my favourites (comes out of one of my most viewed movies after Serenity) and I didn't want to look it at first because 4 was so utterly BS.

Problem with BT, you can watch any German made season to see the problems, to many facts to many characters, jokes that are bad with bad timing and no pointe.

#11 Bombast

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Posted 21 April 2019 - 01:13 PM

View PostSteel Raven, on 20 April 2019 - 05:26 PM, said:

Hollywood has a awful history with game properties (Doom, Resident Evil, Warcraft, ect.)


You know, if you go back and watch Doom now, it's actually not too bad. At least it was trying something, even if that something was pretty dumb.

Most of the improvement it's received over the years is just from modern movies being so ****, though. I rewatched Doom after seeing BvS, which probably had an impact on the experience.

#12 Jonathan8883

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Posted 21 April 2019 - 04:08 PM

For a lower-budget approach, I would go with the Grey Death Trilogy. Decision at Thunder Rift does not require a long boring exposition or screencrawl like, say, suddenly going with the Blood of Kerensky Trilogy would, and it doesn't spend a lot of time on interstellar politics like the Warrior Trilogy. Instead of having to shoot Game of Thrones in Space!withMecha! you're doing Red Dawn in Space!withMecha!
The cast of characters is smaller, you don't need a bunch of exotic sets, you don't have to animate giant battles because there's never more than a half-dozen or so mechs onscreen at a time; there's some "romance" which Hollyweird always likes, but it is a slow burn and not a main focus... you can really stereotype most of the characters like Firefly did because it's a one-and-done movie (at first) instead of having to go super in depth like with some of the later multi-planet books.

Of course, there is a bit of a tonal shift from "A company is a big deal!" to Operation Rat and The Wedding.... but doing some of the periphery side stories is definitely a simpler introduction.

If it's successful? Great, do the next two books in the trilogy. Then find another novel that would make a good one-off...maybe Wolves on the Border...and do that.

Work your way around the universe with a series of fairly simple movies so that people get familiar with it, and then build up to the big politics over time. Make it a Cinematic Universe, but do it in a way that keeps individual budgets low ($20M/movie or less) while maintaining good script quality, acting, and pacing so that you build a reputation for solidly entertaining movies. If you get a bunch of hits, then you can look at expanding into the big Main Storyline stuff like The Warrior Trilogy and eventually the Clan invasion, up until the universe ends in 3067.

Edited by Jonathan8883, 21 April 2019 - 04:20 PM.


#13 Karl Streiger

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Posted 22 April 2019 - 12:01 PM

Oh boy, why are people so inclined on the novels. They were great when Ibwas a child but only a handful is better than simple pulp fiction. You have neither 3d characters nor deep enough science to even be called science fiction.

So the best BT movie we can hope for is a short novella not more then 15min on the screen. Something as simple but powerful as Lucjy Thirteen. That was also just a except of a greater universe based on a novella. The enemy could have been aliens instead of sino-russians. You have some a lot of short but visual powerful sequences and a good narrator and you can call it a day.

A so simple short movie could show the shock of the initial Clan Invasion - take the first novella from the Onslaught Anthology alter the narrator and you have something.


#14 Bombast

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Posted 22 April 2019 - 03:52 PM

View PostKarl Streiger, on 22 April 2019 - 12:01 PM, said:

Oh boy, why are people so inclined on the novels. They were great when Ibwas a child but only a handful is better than simple pulp fiction. You have neither 3d characters nor deep enough science to even be called science fiction.

So the best BT movie we can hope for is a short novella not more then 15min on the screen. Something as simple but powerful as Lucjy Thirteen. That was also just a except of a greater universe based on a novella. The enemy could have been aliens instead of sino-russians. You have some a lot of short but visual powerful sequences and a good narrator and you can call it a day.

A so simple short movie could show the shock of the initial Clan Invasion - take the first novella from the Onslaught Anthology alter the narrator and you have something.


In theory, the simplicity in the Battletech novels lends itself well to movies. Nothing is needlessly complicated. There's a solid line between the bad guys, the good guys, and the bad guys that are actually pretty good. The sci-fi elements lend themselves to visually impressive spectacles without being so outlandish as to distract, and there are numerous characters and events you could focus on.

I can think of several straight forward stories that would make good movies, and several more than would make good trilogies. If nothing else, just do WWIII IN SPACE (Amaris Civil War), or a straight forward action adventure movie with a mercenary unit.





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