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Hot Tub Time Machine's Steve Pink to Write, Direct Sega's Rent a Hero Film
posted on by Egan Loo
Steve Pink (Hot Tub Time Machine films, About Last Night) has agreed to direct a film adaptation of Sega's Rent a Hero video game, and he is also co-writing the proposed film with Jeff Morris (Netflix's The True Memoirs of an International Assassin). Pink wrote the films High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank; Pink's production partner John Cusack starred in those films and Hot Tub Time Machine.
Variety describes the story of the proposed film:
Rent a Hero centers on a reluctant slacker genius who joins a high-tech pitched as an “Uber for Heroes” aimed to improve people's daily lives at an affordable price. But when company insiders plan to weaponize the tech, the slacker and his fellow “Rent a Heroes” band together to stop them.
Sega released the original action role-playing game on its Mega Drive console (known as the Genesis in North America) in 1991. The game inspired a follow-up Rent a Hero No. 1 for Dreamcast in 2000 and Xbox in 2003, and the original version debuted on the Wii's Virtual Console setup in 2007. Sega did not release any of the different versions in English.
Stories International, a joint venture between Sega and advertising agency Hakuhodo DY Group, is overseeing the project. The venture's President and CEO Tomoya Suzuki is producing the project, and Head of Development and Production Evan Cholfin is serving as executive producer.
Stories International, Suzuki, and Choflin are also developing a film for Sega's Shinobi video game franchise. Sega hired Cholfin, a former executive at Break Media, in December 2014 to create film, television, and digital entertainment projects based on Sega's various video game properties. In addition to Shinobi and Rent a Hero, Stories plans to adapt Crazy Taxi, Rise of Nightmares, Streets of Rage, Altered Beast, Virtua Fighter, and Golden Axe into English-language live-action and animated projects.
Thanks to Daniel Zelter for the news tip
Source: Variety (Dave McNary) via Dark Horizons
