A Saints Row movie is coming from the director of Fate of the Furious and Straight Outta Compton, F. Gary Gray. Details are short on what direction the cinematic adaptation will take according to the Deadline report that revealed the project, aside from the fact that Greg Russo is writing it (he's also penning the new Mortal Kombat movie), but boy does it have a hell of a lot of options. I hope the filmmakers take a look at the entire history of Saints Row before they decide what to make of this strange franchise.
The first Saints Row was an unrepentant GTA knockoff that gave open-world action fans explosive thrills in the otherwise subdued Niko Bellic era. Saints Row 2 expanded on that premise with a bigger open world and a more fleshed out story of ambition and violence. Saints Row The Third shedded the gangland grit in favor of Dubstep Guns and gimp-drawn carriages, and somehow it worked beautifully. Saints Row 4 made you the goddamn President of the United States and gave you superpowers to wreak havoc in a Matrix-like simulation run by alien invaders.
You could even call Agents of Mayhem a Saints Row game, since it was a sequel to one of the endings for Saints Row: Gat out of Hell. Oh right, I forgot to mention Gat out of Hell - that was the one where you went to Hell and fought the devil for the immortal soul of the president.
In short, I will be deeply bummed if Gray and co. skirt all of this oddball source material and make an action movie that just happens to star a bunch of folks who call themselves the Third Street Saints. The least it could do is bring back Daniel Dae Kim (who you may also know as Ben Daimio from the Hellboy reboot) as the live-action version of Johnny Gat, his nigh-immortal Saints character. To be fair, I'll also be bummed if the Saints Row movie goes dark after this until we hear it was canceled three years later, as is the case for many such film projects.
See what other adaptations are coming soon on our list of upcoming video game movies. Or see what's new in games and entertainment this week with our latest Release Radar video.
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