Sci-Fi Strategy Board Game DUST to Get Feature Film Adaptation
Lionsgate has picked up the film right to the sci-fi strategy board game Dust, and they will adapt it as a feature film. Director Rawson Marshall Thurber is attached to helm it. He is the same director who brought us the funny comedies We're the Millers and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
I've never played Dust, but it's set in "an alternate history steampunk-themed version of the 1940s where World War II never ended and the world is divided into three blocs: the Allies, comprised of the US, the Commonwealth, and the French colonies; the Axis, not led by Hitler, who was successfully assassinated in Operation Valkerie; and the SSU, a union of the USSR and China. In this landscape the discovery of new ore leads to the creation of combat robots."
Dust sounds like it has all the makings of an awesome movie! The game was created by Paolo Parente, and it also has a graphic novel and even its own convention. Parente is a fantasy illustrator who also worked on other role playing games such as The Mutant Chronicles and Magic: The Gathering before creating his own.
Thurber is mostly known for his comedy work, but it seems like these are the kinds of films he really wants to make. In fact, he's the one who optioned the rights to the property. According to THR, he's also been taking on various fantasy-type writing assignments for projects such as an adaption of the comic book fantasy Elfquest for Warner Bros. as well as an adaptation of Gerard Way’s comic The Umbrella Academy for Universal and Dark Horse.
The writer and director had this to say in a statement:
“It’s a cool spin on a genre that I’ve loved for a long time and it opens up narrative avenues that are just thrilling. It’s all my nine year-old fantasies wrapped in one thing, a World War Two mash-up.”
I think there's big franchise potential with something like this. Especially if Thurber delivers a badass movie that audiences will enjoy. It definitely sounds like something I'd like to see. It will be cool to see how this thing turns out.