God of War movie not dead, will be an origins story

The planned movie adaptation of Sony’s God of War series is still in the pipeline, though it has emerged that the screenplay has required some major tweaking.

That’s according to writing duo Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who also confirmed that the film will be an origins story similar to Batman Begins.

"The only problem with that is it was written before Clash of the Titans, Wrath of the Titans, 300 and Immortals, and those movies borrowed quite a bit from the God of War stories. It was just a little bit outdated, so we wanted to differentiate it from those other movies,” Dunstan told IGN.

Kratos’ silver-screen debut will now highlight the bald brute’s journey before he embarked on his bloody quest for vengeance, which then ultimately leads to him becoming the Ghost of Sparta.

“In the same way that Batman was grounded with Christopher Nolan’s rendition,” Dunstan added, “we were attempting to do that with Kratos so that when we meet him -like they’re doing in this newest game, which is sort of a prequel to the original – we’re seeing him before he became the Ghost of Sparta, when he was just a Spartan warrior and he had family and kids.”

Melton also chipped in, saying the movie makers are hoping to give players insight into what makes Kratos tick, building an emotional relationship between the muscle-bound protagonist and the audience.

“In the game… there’s that attack from the barbarians and Kratos has to call upon Ares to help him. Really, that’s going to be our first act break. Before then, he’s going to be mortal, and he’s going to have his family.”

“We’re going to learn about him and understand how he operates. So it’s potentially 30 minutes – give or take – of building up this character so that, when he does turn and becomes the Ghost of Sparta, we understand him as a human and we understand the journey that he’s going to take. We’re emotionally invested, so that it could go beyond just this one movie,” said Melton.

The latest entry in the God of War videogame series, Ascension, is scheduled to ship exclusively for PlayStation 3 in March 2013.