'Watchmen' Writer Alex Tse To Pen Video Game Adaptation 'Gran Turismo'

Gran Turismo, one of the most celebrated racing franchises in video game history, is coming to the big screen. This we've known this for a while as Social Network/50 Shades of Grey producers Mike De Luca and Dana Brunetti signed onto the Sony franchise over the summer. The move makes sense, based both on the success of the Fast and Furious films and another popular video game franchise, Need for Speed, also heading into theaters.

Now, the next step in the film's construction has taken place. Alex Tse, who adapted Zack Snyder's Watchmen film and is rewriting Highlander, has been tapped to pen the screenplay, which is based on a real life competition that allows video game users to eventually build and race their own cars, just like in the game.

The Hollywood Reporter broke the news of Tse coming on board and Collider got Brunetti to talk about the plot:

A lot of people are like, 'How the hell do you make a movie out of a video game that's basically a driving simulator?' And actually the story is they did an online competition where they narrowed it down 25,000 people competing online, and then got it narrowed down to 22 people that they took to Silverstone race track basically to see if it was possible to go from virtual to reality.  And then they basically put them through a racing boot camp through physical, mental, and technical driving school to train and see who would be the best race car drivers out of that.

The top two they then took and put in the 24 hours at Dubai race, and they are now race car drivers... So the movie that we're gonna do is kind of really a wish-fulfillment fantasy that this kid plays this video game and ultimately goes from this video game to actually racing the race cars."

The competition is called the "GT Academy" and you can read more about it at this link. What's fun about it is Gran Turismo is the kind of game that allows the player to customize their car down to the smallest minutia and race all different brands. This rags-to-riches story would incorporate that in a fun way.

With a writer now in place, it's up to Tse to turn the idea into something worth making, and then De Luca and Brunetti would move ahead from there. What do you think of the writer and idea for the film?