Interview: Gears movie is "touch and go," says Bleszinski

Following April talk of a loss of director and budgets being scaled "way back," Epic's Cliff Bleszinski has told VG247 that the Gears of War movie is now "touch and go," speaking in an interview at Microsoft's Gears of War 3 party in LA tonight.

You can get the full chat below the fold.

Here's what he said. The movie was rumoured to have a $100 million budget, but had been curtailed from a “sprawling epic,” to a “straight-ahead invasion story," according to the LA Times.

Sounds like it may not be happening at all.

VG247: So how's the show working out for you?

Cliff Bleszinski: Working out great, man. Doing double duty. I figure that by next year I'll be in about four press conferences.

Bulletstorm for me is probably game of the show. How's it shaping up?

Cliff Bleszinski: I appreciate that, man. Whenever you're launching a new IP you have to swing fives times as hard, right? It's one of these situations where everyone says, "We need new IPs, we need new IPs." Then gamers say, "We want sequels." What do you want, people? Make up your mind.

I'm pretty proud of the people from PCF. They gave us a certain amount of tangible fun. We're going to win some awards.

It looks as though you're really pushing the tech there, and bringing over the Gears humour. How important is it for you to get humour and top tech into your projects?

Cliff Bleszinski: Well, Gears of War has Don and Marie, and all that, and BulletStorm is just purple assholes and madness everywhere. It's kind of a relief to be working on something like that. So yeah, it's got our DNA in it, but it's all the fun without the seriousness.

How's it been working with an external studio? Obviously, it's an extremely high quality product: what systems do you have in place to stop anything going wrong?

Cliff Bleszinski: First of all, we have a ninja producer, Tanya [Jessen], who's working herself to the bone.

She was the lady on stage with you in the [EA] press conference?

Cliff Bleszinski: Yeah, she's great. And from there on we're just teaching them process. PCF has such talent, but they're like Epic in 2000, and they're like, "Let's make some stuff," and we're, like, "Woah. It takes three months to make a character." We're teaching them the Epic way in terms of process.

Gears of War 3, then. Massive deal for both you and Microsoft. How does it feel to come to the end of the trilogy?

Cliff Bleszinski: Feels good, man. It's a kind of full circle for everything, right? I've been reading the final scripts of the final moments of the game, and I kinda got chills. It's like, this is weird. But it's kind of beautiful at the same time.

How's the movie shaping up?

Cliff Bleszinski: Touch and go.

What's that?

Cliff Bleszinski: It's touch and go. It happens in Hollywood sometimes, man. That's all I can really say right now.