Mafia Wars movie in the works

Game-to-film adaptations are fraught with danger. Even the ones based on good games don’t necessarily result in decent movies – and as for those based on games that were pretty average in the first place? Some of them aren’t even worth thinking about.

…but what happens when the game in question is a casual title? A little bit of procrastinatory fun tucked into your social networking site? Something which seems to have the primary intent of annoying every single ‘friend’ you have by sending them endless requests and gifts and updates? How will that translate to the big screen?

Enter: Mafia Wars, which has apparently just been snapped up by Ted Field and Radar Pictures for a film adaptation.

As far as we know, this is the first Facebook game to get a movie deal (although we’d put money on FarmVille following close behind). Details at this stage are pretty slim, but the logline reveals that it will be a “crime thriller based on the popular video game”. Y’know, in case you couldn’t work that one out yourself…

Radar Pictures are the production company behind The Invention of Lying, Swing Vote, The Last Samurai, The Chronicles of Riddick and the remakes of The Amityville Horror and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We’re not sure quite what that means for the moving picture version of Mafia Wars, but it could get interesting.

If nothing else, this one is guaranteed to have a fairly impressive audience share – more than 25 million people around the world are hooked on growing their criminal enterprises and recruiting their friends. Whether or not they’ll actually leave the computer to go to the cinema though is anyone’s guess.

5 Responses to “Mafia Wars movie in the works”

1. Tweets that mention Mafia Wars movie in the works « GamePron -- Topsy.com says:

   June 30, 2010 at 6:29 am

   [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Simon J. Cole, Kingsley Foreman. Kingsley Foreman said: RT @GamePron: GamePron: Mafia Wars movie in the works http://bit.ly/awDgih [...]

   Reply
2. Jessica says:

   February 17, 2011 at 9:42 am

   The movie would be more interesting if it were to focus on Zynga and how they screw all mafia wars players out of money and leave the players on myspace with a dead app with no upgrades ;) just sayin…

   Reply
3. Frankie says:

   February 17, 2011 at 5:15 pm

   The movie sounds like a great idea. They should have real MafiaWars players in it, maybe it would bring more gameplay to the app & fans. Jessica my myspace MafiaWars works just fine, maybe You should do the skankyleg dance with another heavy set couple and try refreshing your app.

   Reply
4. jonnie says:

   March 16, 2011 at 7:32 pm

   They gonna make a movie about the biggest online game scam in history ?? then the keywords should be SCAM , CHEATING, SCRIPTING, ONE MESS UP AFTER THE OTHER; MAFIA WARS IS NOT A GAME!!! ITS SOMETHING DESIGNED TO GET YOU HOOKED UP AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE AND DEPOSIT TONS OF MONEY, AND THEN YOU GET YOUR GAME SCREWED BY ZYNGA AND ALL THE CHEATERS

   Reply
5. Mafia Wars 2 : VN-News says:

   October 18, 2011 at 8:27 am

   [...] Jessica Citizen (2010-06-30). “Mafia Wars movie in the works”. http://www.gamepron.com/news/2010/06/29/mafia-wars-movie-in-the-works/. Retrieved [...]

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Article Details

• published: June 29th, 2010
• by: Jessica Citizen
• in: Company: Zynga, Facebook, Film, Game: Mafia Wars, Movie, Radar Pictures
• comments: 5

Author Bio:

I like video games, fishing, Depeche Mode, long walks on the beach, writing discussion papers and cups of tea. Not necessarily in that order.

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