With the likes of The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Sonic The Hedgehog doing big business in the multiplexes and The Last Of Us and Fallout receiving critical acclaim on TV, stock in video game adaptations has never been higher. Hell, even Minecraft is about to get the cinematic treatment! And now, according to Deadline, Universal and Sega are looking to capitalise on the genre boom with a live-action take on ninja hack-and-slash classic Shinobi. And that's not all, either — Extraction director Sam Hargrave is set to direct it.
Chronicling modern day ninja Joe Musashi's battles with the forces of evil, the Shinobi series — which comprises 14 mainline and spin-off entries to date, with another on the way — has long-since been an IP on Hollywood's mind. As far back as 2014, Sega were exploring ways to bring the franchise (among several others) to the big screen — and in 2016, producer Marc Platt struck a deal with the gaming giant to work on a Musashi centred movie. Now Platt is set to make good on that deal as his production company prepares to partner with Universal to sharpen Shinobi's shurikens (cinematically speaking) under Hargrave's direction, armed with a screenplay by Sunny and Hit-Monkey scribe Ken Kobayashi.
For Hargrave, this news comes hot on the (w)heels of the announcement that the action filmmaker is set to helm Mattel's Matchbox movie with John Cena. And for Sega, news of another one of their classic games getting a blockbuster makeover lines up nicely with the imminent release of spiny speedster trilogy capper Sonic The Hedgehog 3. And whilst we know very little else about the form Shinobi will take at this point, the prospect of the guy responsible for *that* Extraction 2 oner helping to mount a long overdue comeback for big-screen ninja movies — at least of a non-_Turtles_y variety — is enough to warrant our curiosity and our interest.