Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson To Star In New Line Cinema Adaptation of Rampage Arcade Game
First we hear of Adam Sandler's Pixels, now we hear that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has signed on to star in New Line Cinema's upcoming silver-screen adaptation of Rampage, a popular 3 player arcade game released in 1986 by Bally Midway.
The Rampage arcade game was a three player game in which players were one of three monsters - George the gorilla, Lizzie the lizard and Ralph the werewolf - created from mutated humans. When they were humans, George was a normal middle aged man, Lizzie was a young woman, and Ralph was an elderly man; but were mutated after they were experimented on at Scumlabs.
The aim of the game is to utterly destroy various North American cities while fending off military forces bent on stopping the players and their rampage. Players will advance to the next level once the city has been reduced to rubble and players will get points for eating people and destroying various items like helicopters, tanks, taxis, police cars, boats, and trolleys along the way.
The project has reportedly been in the works since 2011, although this is the first major development since then. New Line is a Warner Bros. owned company, and it was Warner Bros. that acquired mkost of Midway's assets following their bankruptcy in 2009. New Line has not released any specifics about the film at this point, but Deadline reports that Johnson's character "gets in [the monsters'] way."
No director is attached to Rampage at this point, although a script by Ryan Engle (Non-Stop) is in place. Production is set to begin next summer following Johnson's work on Fast & Furious 8, which is scheduled to debut in April 2017.
Rampage is being produced by Beau Flynn (Requiem for a Dream). Flynn and New Line are re-teaming with Johnson after the smashing success of San Andreas. The disaster movie premiered last month and is currently the year's sixth-highest-grossing film worldwide, with more than $415 million in box office receipts.
It's still really early stages for this film, so there's no trailer yet (and won't be for quite some time), but you can check out the Rampage game in the MAME footage below. This is a really fun game to play, especially with friends and if you can find somewhere to play it online or even a machine if you're super lucky, I would definitely recommend giving this one a go!
