The upcoming Saints Row movie is inspired by The Warriors and Escape From New York, according to its writer Greg Russo. The Saints Row movie adaptation announced in 2019 remains in development with The Fate of the Furious helmer F. Gary Gray on board to direct with Mortal Kombat co-writer Greg Russo penning the script. With a first draft yet to be finished, there are not a lot of other details to go around, but if the cinematic adaptation remains faithful to the popular video game franchise on which it is based, audiences will be in for a wild and wacky ride.
Saints Row began in 2006 as an open-world narrative based on a street gang, which was reminiscent of another already popular video game series at the time, Grand Theft Auto. With each installment, the franchise grew more ambitious with a larger open world, more violence, and more absurdity. The latest release Saints Row 4 saw the main character, who was once the leader of the Third Street Saints gang in the fictional cities of Stilwater and Steelport, become the President of the United States before the world is transformed into a Matrix-esque simulation by alien invaders.
Now, in an interview with Collider, the writer of the Saints Row movie is revealing some of the inspiration fueling his upcoming adaptation, which includes a few cinematic cornerstones. "I looked at different films that I really love," Russo says. "I'm a big fan of '70s cinema, so I looked at The Warriors, I looked at Escape From New York and I said, 'how do we pull from some of those and tell our own unique story?'"
Russo went on to discuss the challenges of combining the more realistic, gritty tone of the first few games with the absurd antics found in the later games into one movie, concluding that is all about having "real characters" and "real stakes." Russo will have a difficult balance to strike in his upcoming Saints Row adaptation since he could opt to ignore most of the oddball source material and center the film around the Third Street Saints.
As Hollywood runs out of properties to reboot, they will clearly look to video games to fill that void and Russo has become one of the go-to's for this job, but none of his video game adaptations have yet been released. He has had a hand in writing the upcoming Resident Evil reboot, a script for a F.E.A.R. adaptation, and most notably Mortal Kombat releasing on April 23rd. This hotly-debated title may be indicative of how his Saints Row project will fair.
Source: Collider