This is one property we’d prefer Uwe Boll stay as far away from as possible.
Variety.com is reporting Avi Arad has optioned the movie rights to Bioware’s Mass Effect from Electronic Arts. What this means is Avi is now clear to find a studio, writer and director if he chooses to turn the rights into a major motion picture, which we assume he does.
This move by EA falls right into their recently revealed plan to market their game properties across multiple entertainment mediums like film, comics, television, books and more. They’ve shown a willingness to do this already with a direct-to-video prequel to Dead Space arriving on DVD and Blu-ray Disc this fall, timed with the release of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 game.
As for Ari, he’s shown a knack for bringing big properties to the silver screen. His days working with Marvel’s movie business churned out X-Men, Spider-Man and Iron Man, amongst others (*cough* Ghost Rider *cough*).
How Ari treats Commander Shephard and the worlds of Mass Effect is anyone’s guess at this point. Given the great deal of technology and diverse alien races, we’d have to think Mass Effect will need mass dollars thrown its direction to do justice to the story.
With this news we put the odds of Mass Effect 2 making an appearance in the next couple years at about 110%.
