As you may already be aware, George Miller — director of Mad Max and, more recently, the Happy Feet series — has a keen interest in video games, setting up Kennedy Miller Mitchell, a games studio based in Sydney. Now, in an interview with the Australian Financial Review, Miller has revealed the studio intends to work in Brendan McNamara’s new game, titled ‘Whore of the Orient’.
“It’s four-dimensional storytelling,” said Miller. “A game can literally become the equivalent of a novel. That is the thing that people like me who write screenplays envy about novelists: that you can actually stop time and explore little cul de sacs. Whereas in a movie, you’d love to stop and examine that character, but you can’t. You’re on a rail . . . and if you talk to Brendan, who is the brilliant mind behind this, it’s all the same issues as film. Instead of writing a 100-page screenplay, he wrote a 2800-page screenplay. But it’s the same dialogue, acting, blocking, wardrobe, costume, lighting, vehicle simulations. It’s a movie that’s played interactively at home.â€?
We initially reported that Team Bondi was being integrated into KMM studios back in early August, and Brendan McNamara has been dropping subtle hints about his next project, so it all makes sense.
That said, George Miller’s latest ventures haven’t exactly been running smoothly either. KMM’s studio in Brisbane, which employed the remnants of Krome, was closed down almost immediately after development of the Happy Feet 2 video game was completed, and Dr D, the animation studio behind the movie made almost all of its staff redundant. It hardly sounds like the picture of health reported in the AFR interview.
It’ll be interesting to see exactly how this whole project comes to fruition.
George Miller’s new script [Australian Financial Review]
Thanks Gamespot!
“Whore of the Orient”? My money is on a name change the day after it gets picked up by a publisher.
“Escort of the East”?
Kindly lady friend of the Orient
Possibly to something more PC like “Lady of the night from undetermined Indo-Asian origins”?
“Whore does Orient” maybe? lol its actually more subtle!!!
I loved L.A. Noire and I can’t help to hope this game gets made too, although obviously in a much happier circumstance.
I find the title of the games as offensive as I find Brendan McNamara.
You just can’t make this shit up.
A studio in Syndey…..hopefully they picked up some guys from Team Bondi
Sounds pretty cool. It’ll be interesting see if the name survives the trip, because, depending on how well it ties into the story, it’d be a shame to see it get cut for something a lot more PC.
Then again, if the game is about walking around Switzerland and its title is “Whore of the Orient” well, you get my point…
Game is in for a name change, but I’m interested to see where this goes.
As long as someone else is team leader, and BM just writes/directs.
“Instead of writing a 100-page screenplay, he wrote a 2800-page screenplay.”
Maybe that’s why his game took years to develop even with mandatory overtime?
This snippet of news actually ties in neatly with the interview with Guillermo Del Toro (which is an absolute must listen-to) I finally got around to listening to today.
http://irrationalgames.com/insider/irrational-interviews-9-guillermo-del-toro-part-1/
He has a wonderful grasp of the role and responsibilities of the narrator/story teller in different mediums and is talking with Ken Levine (of Bioshock fame) about the new game he’s making and how different mediums permeate each other – but is wrong to transplant one approach wholly into another or sometimes even between genres.
It comes in two parts, but if this news interests you, you really should watch the interview too.
Employees finally get away from Team Bondi only to be stuck effectively working for McNamara again. What a cruel twist of fate…
I saw George unveil footage of Guardians of Ga’hoole back at the 2008 (?) GDAA in Melbourne. Even back then he was talking about getting into games. I find it amazing that 3 years later, and everything that happened at Team Bondi, that he’d even consider this a good move…
Oh well, more games jobs in Sydney is a good thing, shame that I already have another job teed up for 2012, I’d half consider applying if it weren’t for McNamara.
I actually found the writing/cases etc. pretty damn good in LA Noire.
Fingers crossed about this one. Just this time, maybe let McNamara stick to the ideas.
hm I think they’ll have to get someone to handle McNamara. He was the cause of most of the problems at Team bondi mainly because he was unable to manage. maybe if someone gets a manger to control him because designers can get carried away with their ideas.
Someone needs to reel him in so those who did the work get paid and the game gets released on time.
and there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth
People seem to forget that McNamara wrote all the dialog and story of L.A.Noir (apart from a mediocre ending) it was brilliant. It wa praised for this.
McNamara should have never been in management… but he knows how to write for games.
Also we can assume this game will be made on UDK or another engine… The reason L.A.Noir took as long as it did was because they chose to build an engine from scratch.
I liked the ending in a bitter sweet ‘no heroes here’ kinda way.
As far as I know it’s fairly common for film studios like Dr D or Animal Logic to lay off the majority of their staff at the end of a film…they just re-hire people when they need them again for the next film, and keep a small skeleton staff permanently. Also it kind of made sense for KMM to move from Brisbane to Sydney since that’s where Miller’s studio is – they just needed to finish Happy Feet 2 before they could do that.
So yeah it makes sense…it’s just not great for the poor developers ðŸ™?
Yeap, most folks who work in film, or at least in effects and animation and such like that these guys will be, is an independent contractor. They get hired while they’re needed and then move on once their work is done. You can pretty much guarantee that games will shift entirely to this model in the near future too.
I’m not sure why anyone would want to attribute a game made from a movie to themselves. You think they’d pretend it never happened.