When the video game Heavy Rain was released on Playstation 3 last year, it was hailed for its mature, choose-your-own-adventure narrative. It follows four characters -a journalist, a private detective, an FBI profiler, and a father searching for his missing son- as they hunt for a serial murderer known as the Origami Killer. With branching storylines and long cut scenes, it played out more like an interactive movie than an action-packed game.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that a movie based on the game is in the works. Variety reports that Unique Features has brought Deadwood writer David Milch to the project to pen the adaptation, however, and that level of talent in a video game movie is unexpected.
Milch, co-creator of NYPD Blue, will start writing Heavy Rain as soon as he’s finished with the first season of the HBO series Luck, which he created and executive produced.
“David Milch’s incredible ability to transform intense and complex storylines into gripping, popular drama makes him the perfect partner for us to have on Heavy Rain,” Unique’s Bob Shaye said.
The game was created by the Paris-based company Quantic Dream. It’s script, written by founder and CEO David Cage, was a whopping 2,000 pages long. Milch will most likely have to cut a scene or two.
Will Heavy Rain be the Citizen Kane of video game movies, or are the producers overly ambitious?