John August

Prince of Persia

Pitching Prince of Persia

Pitches, Prince of Persia, Projects

Jordan Mechner has posted the game-footage trailer we used when we pitched the feature film version of Prince of Persia to the studios six years ago.

Most movie pitches don’t involve video, but with PoP, most of the studio executives weren’t familiar with the game at all, so it became an important way to introduce them to both the franchise and the world. As Jordan notes in his post, this trailer doesn’t really tell the story of the movie, but it does give a sense of the characters and style: the dashing prince’s acrobatics, the devoted priestess/princess, the dagger with its time-reversing slickness.

Jordan and I pitched seven studios over two days. Each time, the presentation was pretty much identical.

  1. Introductions. Apologies for keeping us waiting. (1 minute)
  2. John hyping Jordan’s prestigious videogame background. (1:00)
  3. Play the video. (2:10)
  4. Jordan describes the world of the Persian empire, using artwork. (:30)
  5. John pitches Prince Dastan, using artwork of him. (:30)
  6. John and Jordan alternate pitching story, introducing character/prop artwork as new things come up. (6:00)
  7. Questions about story, tone and scale. “Somewhere between Pirates and Raiders. It’s not Lawrence of Arabia.”(3:00)
  8. Promises that they’ll follow up. (1:00)

Altogether, we could get through the pitch in less than 20 minutes. Disney liked it, and sent us to Jerry Bruckheimer’s company, who bought it from Jordan. The film comes out next May.

Here’s the trailer we used for the pitch. The actual trailer for the movie is ridiculously good, and should be out before too long.

Prince of Persia movie pitch trailer (2003) from jordan mechner on Vimeo.

Playing to the core

Film Industry, Genres, Prince of Persia

Brian Lowry cautions against taking Comic-Con buzz too seriously:

Surrounded by ardent fans, it’s easy to get sucked into Comic-Con’s vortex of enthusiasm, forgetting that even with 120,000 people descending on the convention center, that’s still a very, very self-selected group.

The same thing happens at Sundance: films that get a rapturous response in Park City often underwhelm at lower altitudes. Everything plays better to a hungry crowd, particularly one that has trekked a long way just to see what you’ve got.

But that’s not a reason to avoid either festival. If you can’t play to the base, you’re unlikely to push beyond it, either. A movie like Iron Man wants its geek bona fides before pushing further towards the mainstream. Where it gets trickier is a show like Pushing Daisies. Winning a small, ardent fan base can be self-limiting, particularly if it sets you off as a niche program out of the gate.

None of my projects are directly featured this year, though Jordan Mechner will be on a panel about his Prince of Persia graphic novel — a prequel to the movie — and Tim Burton will inevitably get questions about our next two movies.

Prince of Projects

Prince of Persia, Projects, Videogames

Friend and occasional writing partner Jordan Mechner has been tinkering on a website for a few months, and is now ready to invite the world in. He has a lot to share about 20 years in the videogame industry, and the transition from designer to screenwriter.

Basically, my plan is to blog, post sketches, and answer questions people send in — most of which I expect will be about Prince of Persia.

Yes, he’ll actually talk about it. We’re both executive producers on the 2010 blockbuster, but he’s been vastly more involved over the past two years, visiting set in Morocco and generally keeping himself in the loop.

I’ll also continue to post blogs from the past via the “Old Journals” feature, telling the gritty, no-holds-barred, inside story of the first making of POP on the Apple II, 1985-1989. Not sure quite who will be interested in that one, but hopefully someone.

Not just that — Karateka. My brother and I spent a summer playing Karateka on the Atari 800.

So check out his site: jordanmechner.com.

Prince of Perhaps

Prince of Persia, Projects

Several sites have reported that Disney has picked July 10, 2009 as the release date for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. My guess is that this got written on a whiteboard at some strategic planning meeting, in answer to the question, “Hey, if we made that Prince of Persia movie, when would we release it?”

It’s a perfectly good date, but I have no idea if there will be a movie to show. I don’t know if it’s getting made, or who’s directing, or who’s starring. No one knows, not even the people signing the checks. It’s still a project in development.

At this point, it’s fair to ask, “Hey John! Aren’t you executive producing Prince of Persia? Shouldn’t you be providing us readers with all the inside scoop?”

I’ll pass, thanks.

In fact, this is the last I’ll mention of Prince of Persia. Every time I bring it up, I get besieged with headshots from would-be princes, and re-ignite the debate about ancient ethnicity, a subject I have no particular interest or authority to address. The downside of making myself accessible is that people feel entitled to share their opinions, repeatedly and sometimes impolitely. I can handle that for one of my movies. But this is not my movie to make, and it’s not my movie to explain or defend.

I hope it gets made. I hope it’s terrific. I am basically an ocean of hope. But whatever happens, Prince of Persia will never be “my movie” the way Go, Big Fish, or The Nines are. I enjoyed babysittting the prince, but he’s not my kid. I’ll leave it to the real parents to speak for him.