Down the rabbit hole
For those not in the know, American McGee’s Alice is a game based on a dark version of Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, penned by writer/game dev American McGee. The game is described as a third-person shooter/puzzle, based on the Quake III Arena engine. I am a huge fan of this game, the visual styles and strong storyline are what drew me into this game. So much so, I even own some of the figurines that were released a couple of years back.
There has been talk of a game-to-film adaptation for the last couple of years but nothing has appeared and fans of the series, including myself, have been left hanging. In the beginning, Wes Craven was signed on to direct the film in 2000 for Dimension Films with and as the film rights moved from one distribution house to the next, the project finally landed in the lap of Universal Pictures and to be directed by Marcus Nispel.
Based on this latest article from SciFi Wire, it mentions in an interview with Sarah Michelle Gellar (who has been tied to the project since she signed on to play the lead role in 2005) now owns the film rights and is keen to finally bring the project to light.
“We got the rights to it, and Universal wound up getting really excited and put a lot of money into it, and then it’s the usual story. There was a regime change.”
“It’s still my project, and I’m still working diligently. So to all those Alice fans, I’m not giving up. Because I believe there is such a beautiful, crazy, cool, twisted story to be told there.”
Well, this is news to me… I haven’t heard anything about this at all. That said, it seems I am not the only one. I just checked American McGee’s blog and he was also surprised that apparently SMG now owns the film rights. Somehow, I think there’s a lot more to this that what is being told.
I’ll keep my eyes peeled for more news as it floats down the intertubes.