Broken Sword 2
Image: Revolution Software

A film based on the classic adventure game series Broken Sword is currently in development from Revolution Software, Story Kitchen, and the screenwriter behind Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, Evan Spiliotopoulos, Variety reports.

Debuting in 1996 with the release of Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars on PC & Mac OS, the series, which typically focuses on the adventures of American George Stobbart and the French photojournalist Nico Collard, has since grown into a long-running video game franchise encompassing a number of sequels, ports, and remakes.

Over the last few years, its developer, Revolution, has been busy "reforging" the first two Broken Sword games, and previously teased that a sixth entry in the series, Parzival's Stone, was in development back in 2023, though we haven't heard all that much about that one since it was announced.

According to Variety, the film will feature a script from Spiliotopoulos, whose other notable credits include Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and the G.I. Joe movie Snake Eyes. Story Kitchen, meanwhile, which you may know from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies, the upcoming Life Is Strange series at Amazon, and a string of similar announcements to this one for other games, is set to produce.

If you've been a fan of the series for a long time, you'll know that this isn't the first time a movie has been mentioned in relation to the series. Back in 2007, ComingSoon.Net, for instance, reported that a movie based on the series "was underway", with action/adventure producer Jay Douglas and Nav Gupta developing the project for their company CastleBright Studios. However, just one year later, Cecil was quoted as saying the studio was still in the process of talking to "several small studios in Los Angeles," and that, though he was "excited" about working on a film, he felt that "a bad movie... risks destroying the franchise" and he'd, therefore, want to write it. This is something he seems to have changed his mind about in the years since, clearly trusting Story Kitchen to do what's best for the project.

In a joint statement, published by Variety, Story Kitchen co-founders Dmitri M. Johnson and Michael Lawrence Goldberg said, “Very few franchises of this era have stayed relevant, premium, and loyal to the intelligence of their audience. ‘Broken Sword’ has done all three. Our work here isn’t to adapt a game into a film. It’s to move a world that has been building for three decades into the next medium it deserves, working hand-in-hand with the people who built it.”

Cecil, meanwhile, wrote, “Story Kitchen came to this project with a deep passion for the IP. That’s rare. The creative conversations have been about translating what ‘Broken Sword’ is, rather than what it can be made to look like. I am hugely excited to be working with Story Kitchen and Evan.”

Revolution Software has since shared the story on their social media, inevitably prompting a ton of questions, such as whether it will be hand-animated or live-action, but the studio has told fans for now, "We can't go into detail outside of the article."

So, if you're wondering if there's going to be an hour-long scene of a goat butting the protagonist to the floor, or a flatulent nightwatchman, I'm afraid we'll sadly have to wait.

[source variety.com]