Diesel started his own video game company, Tigon Studios, and co-produced the project.
Diesel "was very, very involved," says Ben Fritz, who covers video games for Variety, the Los Angeles-based trade publication. "It used to be, five years ago or so, that to a movie studio a video game was similar to a toy or a doll, where you just let somebody else make it and you hope it makes some extra money and that's all there is to it. These days, it's considered an important creative piece of media on its own."
'The Chronicles of Riddick' gave birth to a video game version.
(Joseph Lederer -- Universal Studios)
|
|
Warner Bros. started its own in-house video game division in January 2004, becoming the first Hollywood studio to do so. Last month, Warner Bros. Interactive published The Matrix Online, budgeted at nearly $20 million. Larry and Andy Wachowski, the brothers behind the Matrix film series, are consultants.
The interest from Hollywood directors and actors -- Samuel L. Jackson, for example, lent his voice to Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, last year's top-selling game -- will only grow, says Scott Lane, executive producer of Singleton's Fear & Respect.
"What you see in past video games is, no matter how much fun the game is, most of them seem to lack that quality, cinematic experience: the camera angles, the lighting, the storytelling," says Lane. "With the next generation of consoles" -- PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2 are expected in the next two years -- "cinematics will play a gigantic role."
Singleton is keeping that in mind. Fear & Respect, he insists, isn't more of the same -- "it's not another Grand Theft Auto," he says. It's violent, he concedes, the same way an R-rated film is violent. "But it's not another shoot-'em-up. There's a running meter in the game: one for fear, one for respect. You can't go through the game just shooting people," he explains.
If Fear & Respect had been a movie -- which could happen, because Paramount Pictures has already optioned the movie rights -- crime wouldn't be the be-all, end-all. It's a consequence, says Singleton, who's splitting his time between Toronto, where he's filming "Four Brothers," starring Mark Wahlberg, Tyrese and Andre 3000 of the hip-hop duo OutKast, and Los Angeles, where he's still going over storyboards for Fear & Respect. Listening to him talk, it is impossible to tell which project -- the movie or the video game -- is deemed a greater priority.
"I'm from a generation that has learned to multitask by playing a video game," says Singleton, who's talking on his cell phone from a comic book store on Melrose Avenue in L.A.
"Most of the games out there haven't attempted to get an emotional response from the gamer outside of doing something spectacular, outside of doing something wild," Singleton says.
Fear & Respect, he says, is, in a way, an extension of "Boyz N the Hood." It's only natural for Singleton.
"I've grown up," he says, "with a joystick in my hand."
