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Saints Row Movie Will Be Influenced by The Warriors, Escape from New York

What if you took the open-world charms Grand Theft Auto, crossed it with the gonzo crime opera of Takashi Miike‘s Dead or Alive trilogy, and threw in the hyper-muscled power of an Infamous to boot? You’d have something like Saints Row, the video game franchise that began with your classic street gang open world narratives, but has since evolved into something weirder, wilder, and more purposefully hilarious. Like, “your character can become the President and also fight a bunch of aliens” hilarious.

RELATED: ‘Saints Row The Third’ Review

Greg Russo, co-writer of the recent Mortal Kombat adaptation, is writing the screenplay for the Saints Row movie, and during my MK Zoom interview with him, I asked him about the difficulties that come with turning such a wild, open world into one coherent story. Russo admitted some of the difficulties, while singing the praises of his director to boot: “It’s a tricky one, right? I love the franchise, I’ve played all the games, huge fan of it. And we have a director, F. Gary Gray, who’s attached to it, who’s an amazing, visionary director. He’s done some incredible [films], some of my favorite films, including Set It Off, which I still think is one of the best. It’s fantastic. So he’s got a great vision for it, he knows what he wants to do.”

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Image via THQ

Russo went on to explain his storytelling tactics and film influences for the project:

“I think from a storytelling perspective, it was two things. The tricky thing with something like Saints Row is gonna be tone, right away. ‘Cause if you know the franchise, you know that it basically had two tones. It has more of the gritty tone, which is the first couple [games], and then it goes kind of bonkers and just absolutely insane. And so, we wanted to make sure that we weren’t isolating either of those. So it’s about just trying to find the tonal balance where you have real characters, real stakes — again, that was part of it with Mortal Kombat, too. You want it to feel real, you want the characters to feel real, as much as possible. But you also wanna lean into what made it fun, and lean into that craziness. So part of it was trying to figure out that tone, which I think it’s finally gotten into a place where it makes sense. And then it was a matter of, ‘What kind of movie is this? Because how do you take an open-world [game] and tell a story?’ So I looked at different films that I really love. I’m a big fan of ’70s cinema, so I looked at The Warriors, I looked at Escape From New York — just some of those classics. And I said, ‘Well, how do we pull from some of those and tell our own unique story?’ So I’m excited for it. We’ll see.”

I’m not going to lie to you: A film with the gritty tactility of an Escape From New York or a Warriors (which has its own excellent video game adaptation) with the out-and-out silliness and insanity of the Saints Row franchise at its most unhinged sounds like quite the unique film, for fans of the game and fans of bonkers genre cinema. We’ll keep you updated on the Saints Row movie as soon as we know more. Until then, be on the lookout for more from our Russo interview.

KEEP READING: New ‘Mortal Kombat’ Footage, Brutal Fights Revealed in Behind-the-Scenes Video

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