The Player

As the film of Heavy Raingoes into production, JOE GRIFFINasks if this will be the first great film based on a game

ONE YEAR AGO I was in Paris attending a press conference, where film-makers Terry Gilliam, Mathieu Kassovitz and Neil LaBute were singing the praises of Heavy Rainand its writer/creator, David Cage. The directors raved about the interactive narrative of the game, and its cinematic content, falling just short of kissing the French game developer's feet.

Heavy Rainwent on to sell in excess of a million copies (not too shabby considering it's only on the PlayStation 3) and bask in critical acclaim. Recent news emerged about a film in production, prompting even more excitement.

Here's the thing: Heavy Rainhas strong storytelling and characterisation . . . for a videogame. As an interactive narrative it was atmospheric and exciting, but to just sit and watch footage without picking up the controller exposes it as an entertaining but pretty hackneyed noir mystery. The appeal lay in the well-made quick-time events and weighty moral dilemmas that affected the outcome for up to four central characters. The story has an estimated 22 endings. A film would have none of these elements, of course, so claims that Heavy Rainwould be the first great videogame film was dismissed as hyperbole.

However, this gamer's faith in the film was given a boost when I heard that David Milch will write the screenplay. Milch may not be the best-known writer in Hollywood, but he does have a remarkable CV, working extensively on some of the best TV shows of the past two decades, including NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Murder Oneand Deadwood(which he also co-created). Lately he's been writing the pilot for Luck, a new series starring Dustin Hoffman.

Compare Milch's pedigree to that of previous game adapters – critical whipping boys such as Uwe Boll (Dungeon Siege) and Paul Thomas Anderson (Resident Evil). Even Roger Avery, who co-wrote Pulp Fiction, stumbled with his big-screen adaptation of Silent Hill.

Heavy Rainwill be a new direction in the deservedly maligned game-adaptation genre, a rare adaptation that will focus on its characters and story more than pyrotechnics. Quantic Dream were rewarded for their risk- taking by open-minded gamers. Whether New Line will deliver a similarly compelling film, and whether audiences will be so open- minded, remains to be seen.