American Pie producer buys Soul Calibur movie rights

The Hollywood Reporter, er, reports that American Pie and Final Destination producer Warren Zide has acquired the film rights to Namco's Soul Calibur beat-'em-up series, which coincidentally just won a BAFTA for the second game's introductory movie.

Zide will reportedly release the film under his Sony-based production company Anthem Pictures, with Matthew Rhodes and Noel Vega on production and Jesse Warshal overseeing it at Anthem. Yeah... We have no idea who these people are, but we know they haven't set a target date for the movie as yet.

Although it sounds like the film is very much at the 'throw money at the name' stage of proceedings, it's more than likely that the film will take elements from the game's plot (cue widespread gasps of "Wait, it had a plot!?") which focused on the fate of the almighty Soul Edge. We're obviously hoping for ridiculously vicious and well-shot fight scenes full of recognisable techniques and splattered gore. We're also praying that it doesn't 'do a Street Fighter' and reason something like "well there's a character in it called Dhalsim so lets turn him into some sort of goddamn mad scientist". You may not take any liberties with our beloved Soul Calibur, Mr. Zide. We've suffered enough in the past.

In a way though, there is some call to be happy about Zide's acquisition of the rights to one of the finest beat-'em-up series of the last decade. Because if Zide hadn't, then professional film rights aggregator and House of the Dead mis-director Uwe Boll surely would have sooner or later. Shudder.