Although it was already confirmed last summer by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson that he would be starring in a Rampage Movie, based on the 30 year old arcade game by Mid-Way, it looks like writers and a shooting schedule are confirmed for the movie. According to The Rock’s instagram, they have just hired Carlton Cuse and Ryan Condal to write the script and shooting will begin this summer. Cuse was a writer for Lost and Condal wrote San Andreas which also starred Dwayne Johnson.
Johnson reassures that Condal “excels at big scale with family and heart as the anchor.” So we can assume that Dwayne Johnson has to win back the affection of his daughter and ex-wife by saving people from giant monsters in a helicopter. The Rock’s wife left him because he spends too much time at his job saving people’s lives, so stopping giant monsters is his chance for redemption. I can’t wait for this giant monster movie to mostly have scenes of people talking and The Rock sitting in a helicopter.
Dwayne Johnson also said on Instagram “We have a shot to raise the bar and make something cool with this one as the basic storyline is three mutated gigantic monsters (Silverback, Alligator, and Wolf) destroy major cities and landmarks across the U.S.” I’m sure the creators will do the game justice by turning the colorful and cartoony monsters from the game into giant gray messes of CGI. There may be a scene where a group of people run away from a giant green screened monster foot.
Apparently a lot of research is put into this movie, as the Rock also claimed “I’ll spend time at the San Diego wildlife preserve as well with Anti-Poaching Units from Africa for my research.” Thank goodness, because I was really concerned that this movie about giant monsters destroying cities would feel unrealistic.
It seems a little bit redundant to make a movie based on Rampage because Rampage was already based on classic giant monster movies. Sometimes these videogame movies are hard to make because the videogame themselves are already like movies, such as the Resident Evil and Hitman movies. Well, at least Rampage doesn’t really have a story, so the writers can take a lot of liberties with the source material.