I have a feeling that someone, somewhere is trying to get every ounce of value they can out of a prop rental for a set of four comically oversized manacles. That’s the only explanation I’ve landed on for why Chained Together, an ultra-hard co-op platformer about four characters being, well, chained together, is getting a film adaptation. Yet, here we are.
The film, as reported by Deadline, is being developed by Anton, the production group behind the 2020 film Greenland, and writers Cory Todd Hughes and Adrian Speckert. Hughes and Speckert don’t have any screenplays about being chained together a la Chained Together on their resumes yet, but they have worked on another videogame adaptation: the upcoming Finding Frankie film, the source material for which looks to be one of those not-quite-Five Nights at Freddy’s-type games littered about Steam.
It’s an odd choice for an adaptation. Chained Together doesn’t strike me as a narratively inclined game, but then again, neither do Minecraft, Outrun, or Rampage. It has felt for a while now that being based on videogames is the entire point of these films, and whether a given game lends itself to film as a medium is tertiary. It seems to be an effective strategy, as some of these films have certainly proven lucrative in recent years.
A joint statement from Speckert and Hughes reads: “We believe there’s an endless amount of fun to be had with the premise. The game’s collaborative nature, the dependency between players chained together, creates a unique foundation for cinematic storytelling.”
It’s refreshing to see a quirky indie cut one of these deals instead of a decades-old behemoth like The Legend of Zelda or Sonic the Hedgehog. Maybe this all ends with Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart quipping about each other’s height as they dodge globs of CGI lava, but in an industry as hellish as this one, I’m not going to begrudge anyone their movie deal as long as it doesn’t inspire bouts of mob violence. After all, Chained Together was always a spectacle at heart.
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