A film based on the “Duke Nukem” video-game franchise is finally coming to the big screen. Legendary has acquired the rights to adapt Gearbox’s franchise into a feature film, and they’ve brought aboard the creators of “Cobra Kai” as producers.
“Duke Nukem,” which first launched as a macho first-person shooter game in 1991, will be produced by Legendary along with Counterbalance Entertainment’s Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg (Cobra Kai) and Marla Studio’s Jean Julien Baronnet.
The video games saw the title character as a hulking, gun toting, cigar chomping, ass-kicking hero fighting off aliens and rescuing hot babes in an unironic, ’90s action style. While the game’s humor and tone may be dated, the video game’s design and technical achievements have made it a successful franchise, and future installments, including most recently “Duke Nukem Forever” in 2011 after Gearbox acquired the rights to the franchise, have helped turn it into a $1 billion cash cow.
No plot details have been revealed, and no screenwriter or director has been set, but Marla’s Baronnet spoke with TheWrap about the “Duke Nukem” about the project last year and described Duke as “Deadpool on steroids,” envisioning a story in which the egotistical, misogynistic brute from the ’90s transports into an alternate universe to meet a more respectful, woke version of himself in the future.
Various producers have been trying to get a “Duke Nukem” movie off the ground since the ’90s, including a version by Lawrence Kasanoff, another by “Max Payne” producer Scott Faye during the late 2000s and again in 2018 when it was even set at Paramount and Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes with John Cena attached to star.
Counterbalance Entertainment is the creative force behind “Cobra Kai.” Baronnet is the co-founder of Marlas Studios, a production company specializing in adapting video games into movies and TV shows. Previously he was the CEO of EuropaCorp and founder and CEO of Ubisoft Film & Television (formerly Ubisoft Motion Pictures). He was the producer of “Assassin’s Creed” and the “Raving Rabbids” video game franchise.
Counterbalance Entertainment is represented by CAA. Heald’s attorney is Howard Abramson of Behr Abramson Levy. Jon and Hayden’s attorney is Adam Kaller of Hansen, Jacobson, Teller, Hoberman, Newman, Warren, Richman, Rush, Kaller & Gellman, L.L.P.
THR first reported the news.
