After last month’s announcement that Doug Liman will direct the Splinter Cell movie, an Oscar nominated screenwriter has been hired by New Regency and Ubisoft to pen the adaptation. Sheldon Turner has had a very short stint in Hollywood, but has written some diverse pictures. He started his career with writing the Adam Sandler remake The Longest Yard and followed that with a prequel to a remake, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning. However, following those two critically-lambasted films, Turner was nominated for an Academy Award for writing George Clooney’s Up in the Air; and in 2011 he wrote the fanboys favorite X-Men: First Class.
Oscar Nominated Screenwriter Sheldon Turner.
As anyone can see the man’s work has been on both sides of the ‘critical spectrum,’ but it is extremely rare for an Oscar nominated screenwriter to work on a video game adaptation. And this is the second Oscar nominated screenwriter to work on a draft of the Splinter Cell movie: the first was American Hustle’s Eric Singer. But it is no surprise that Doug Liman has brought on Sheldon Turner to write another draft because he worked with both Liman and Tom Hardy on the biography Everest: while Benedict Cumberbatch is set to star in Everest, Tom Hardy was the initial lead before departing.
While the shooting of Everest got delayed until next year, the studio wants to start shooting Splinter Cell in August, which would result in a 2015 release. As previously reported, Doug Liman will produce the project with “Basil Iwanyk of Thunder Road Pictures and Jean-Julien Baronnet of Ubisoft Motion Pictures.” As anyone can see, this adaptation has started to ‘pick up pace’ and fans should be excited to see the eventual product from this talented tandem.
What do you think of this new screenwriter? Will this movie ‘break the mold’ of terrible adaptations? Will we ever get a good video game adaptation? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. And for any updates, please continue to read Gamer Headlines.
Source: Deadline