F. GARY Gray, the director of Fate of the Furious and Straight Outta Compton, is adapting the Grand Theft Auto-style video game franchise “Saints Row.”
With action comedy Men in Black: International heading to theaters in June, its director has picked up video game franchise Saints Row as a future project.
The series started out in 2006 as an action adventure about a citywide turf war – a direct competitor to the enormous Grand Theft Auto franchise.
Since then, the series has adopted a more joyously parodic tone and seen the Third Street Saints gang go from local outfit to trendy criminal corporation and then leaders of an alien-defeating government administration, while a 2015 standalone took players on a rescue mission into hell.
F. Gary Gray, who began his career making music videos for iconic West Coast hip hop artists like Ice Cube, Cypress Hill, Coolio and Dr. Dre, got his start in feature films with mid-90s pictures Friday (co-starring Ice Cube) and Set It Off.
Since steering N.W.A. rap group biopic Straight Outta Compton to critical and commercial success in 2015, he’s helmed the eighth Fast & Furious action movie The Fate of the Furious and, this year, aliens-on-earth action comedy Men in Black: International.
Other upcoming projects include an adaptation of 1980s toy and cartoon TV series franchise M.A.S.K.: Mobile Armored Strike Kommand, and an adaptation of 2017’s striking sci-fi heist video game Echo.
The Saints Row adaptation will be based on a script by Greg Russo, currently attached to movie versions of the Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil franchises, as well as a second Death Note film for Netflix.-AFP
