It’s been a while since Sony announced a Ratchet & Clank feature film for release in 2015, with surprisingly little updates since, but it seems that the trigger-happy duo won’t be the only PlayStation mascots to make the leap to the big screen!
In a surprise reveal today, Sony released a gorgeously-animated Sly Cooper theatrical pitch video, with confirmation that the movie has already been green-lit by the PlayStation maker, and will come to theatres in 2016, just one year after the Ratchet & Clank movie!
The pitch video showcases a comical donut heist for a hungry Murray by Sly, with Bentley constantly urging him of the apparent ‘danger’. The same voice actors from the games appear to be portraying each character. The footage ditches the recognizable cel-shaded art style of the Sly Cooper games in favour of a more detailed and lifelike form of CG, but the result is nonetheless quite striking and gorgeous. It’s a movie concept with a lot of promise!
Blockade Entertainment and Rainmaker Entertainment, the same studios behind the Ratchet & Clank movie, are again going to be putting together the Sly Cooper movie, with Sony’s help of course. The movie will be written and directed by Kevin Munroe, who also wrote and directed the 2007 CG TMNT movie. The story is confirmed to adapt elements of the first game in the series, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, with Sly, Bentley and Murray competing for a great treasure against mechanical owl, Clockwerk. It’s unconfirmed if Clockwerk’s underlings in his rival group of thieves, the Fiendish Five, will be featured in the movie.
Sly Cooper is one of a rising count of movie blockbusters confirmed for a 2016 release, along with fellow video game adaptations, Angry Birds and Warcraft, an undisclosed Marvel Studios movie, blockbuster sequels, X-Men: Apocalypse, The Amazing Spider-Man 3, Finding Dory, How To Train Your Dragon 3, and Alice in Wonderland 2: Through the Looking Glass, and finally, the recently-delayed Man of Steel 2 and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
The most recent game in the Sly Cooper franchise was Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time, a well-reviewed but commercially-underwhelming cross-buy offering shared between the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. Beforehand, the series spanned a trilogy on the PlayStation 2, which was later remastered in HD and re-released on the PlayStation 3 as The Sly Collection.
Keep sneaking to Eggplante for updates on the Sly Cooper movie, and the franchise as a whole, as they’re unveiled.