TURRICAN the movie

Hello there

I'm Dimitris A.K.A Jimakoma from sun, rain in life. I'm sure there have been many other attempts like this around the world through the years. We have written an original concept based on TURRICAN video game and we've contacted a professional writer to compose a more "official" version of a scenario treatment to present to the producers.
Just because we wanted to make sure our main concept was worth it and it would actually had a shot in the market we had it evaluated by several screen writers. They talked about several aspects of it needed some clarification but that the main body was indeed original and interesting.
So we later on did a research on who's got the licensing rights of the game. We found out, if true, that THQ was the last who owned the rights. Several efforts have been made to contact them via email but we got no replies whatsoever.
Can anyone confirm that THQ has indeed the rights of Turrican? Any help on this is welcome!

I personally believe that Turrican would make a great movie IF treated right and with the proper care... We're kids & teenagers of the 80's - 90's and we don't want to see it a Beefy B class sort of a movie.

Thank you

The rights of the game are very complicated thing.. In Europe they belong to THQ as far as I know.. I don't know what happened to the American rights, Factor5 owned.
It's even more complicated...

But if you want to see a Beefy B class movie anyway, have a look for Turicon - The Legend of Sollthar!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q05xwoUVMgw

Was a thrill indeed, thanks for sharing
Is it that difficult for THQ to reply with a simple no? Anyhow will wait and see if we find our way in somehow.

This is great news, probably like other Turrican fans I've wondered about a Turrican film.

Sollthar was certainly fun, not the least for the rather cheesy effects and crazy soundtrack, but for me it didn't quite have the feeling of a Turrican film, ---- and that's not because of the low budgit.

I'd always thought of a Turrican film being far more based in deep space, with either a space war sort of feeling, or a lone ship explorin alien planets.

For me, the hole future police thing Legend of Sollthar did didn't quite come up to expectations, ---- though I understand that perhaps setting the film around earth was possibly due to the less than huge budgit.

One question though. As well as rights to the characters and concept, will you be looking into getting rights to adapt Cris Huelsbek's music to be part of the filmscore?

I've always felt his music has a very epic film score feeling with it's use of chords and melodies, and in many ways it's as much part of Turrican as it's characters or setting.

Obviously your stil in the developement stage and haven't even got a script writer let alone a composer, but as your investigating legal issues I wondered if you'd considdered asking about the music as well.

My last information on this is documented at:
http://www.nemmelheim.de/turrican/index.php?keyword=+word+mark

But in doubt ask Robert (webmaster of http://www.turricanforever.de/), I guess he has some more insight on this topic.

Thank you very much for the links! Hope we can find the right owner!

The project is developing in a steady yet very slow pace. Because Greece goes through heavy economic crises, we lost all the Monday we gathered and had to rerise it! Unfortunately a second wave of heavy taxis knocked it out for the second time... We currently re-rerising in order to have the movie treatment. Once it's ready and established as our intellectual property (scenario only of course), we would love to post it here.

Cris music is literally the aspect this movie is totally based on! Actually people are going to either totally love it or totally diss like it, there will be no in between feelings abou it I think. That's the problem/blessing with original ideas.

Thank you very much
Please feel free to ask us anything
And speak up your mind freely

((above post is a cellphone reply. Monday= money))

guys, get the hell out of there! Greece is going down and until the South Rises Again, it is hell on earth.

You are so very right. We're pinned down at the moment though. First chance we have we might immigrate Australia or Canada. Whatever we decide though it will be unanimous, as we can't afford to split as a team. By reading your name I get it you're actually Greek! You living in Greece or in another country?

another country. the only thing that i will miss (except the "ingredients" of your band name) is the moment when the South Will Rise Again and will eat its oppressors alive.

btw, a blog from another turri fan (from Hellas) with interesting ideas for concept art:
http://turricanoid.blogspot.com/

guys, good luck on your ambitious project and bravo for going for it! THE MASTER (Manfred Trenz) will always be a great source for inspiration!!

I could imagine a Turrican film very well.
Being a sort of Star Wars or something, it is sure that it would need to differ much from the Turicon - The Legend of Sollthar.
I personally can very well imagine the soundtrack of Chris Huelsbeck running thru the video, just like in game. Well, perhaps Turrican orchestrated OST soundtrack would fit better for this.
Yet one thing occupies the mind - which part of the game series would be the film?
Would it be Turrican 1 - with final antagonist Morgul, Turrican 2 against the Machine and its forces, or Turrican 3 - the return of the Machine, rescuing enslaved girl?
I personally would suggest Turrican 2 - there is most of the characters that could be used - Avalon 1 and its crew, Colonel Aardon Striker, his crew and our main hero, Bren McGuire. Also there's the Machine and his forces that invade Avalon 1 leaving none spared, except of Bren, who makes his revenge.

To make the movie have enough of landscape and environment where it would take place, maybe there would be needed to combine the worlds of all Turrican game series. Say, do you think Turrican 1, 2 and 3 take place in the same environments - as you can see, there are resemblances - 1st ground levels, then underground levels with water, then some space levels, some machinery levels and of course, alien levels. Could the places in story be the same?

I agree totally that Turrican 2 would seem to have the best setting for a film, perhaps something startrek style with the Avalon 1 explorin the edge of the galaxy and encountering the machine.

one project I've actually been working on myself off and on for the last couple of years is a Turrican based novel set around the plots of Turrican 1 and 2 which actually explains how the two stories are linked together, though I must admit that's been proving a little more work than I thought sinse it involves writing a literal thousand year time line of galactic history stretching from the late 21st to early 31st centuries, as the idea I'm working on is that Turrican 1 takes place in the year 2090, while Turrican 2 is set in 3025, and the connections betwene the two stories are indeed what makes up the plot.

As regards Turrican 3, I never personally liked the kidnapped girl plotline or the return plot, sinse it explained nothing and just sounded a little cliched. How did the machine return? who was he in the first place? Who's this random girl called Maia and why was it so important to randomly rescue her?

For a returning machine plot, Super Turrican 2 actually does a better job, not the least because it's the only original Turrican title to have ongoing plot throughout the game, and I really liked the idea of a space system stuck inside a black hole where the machine was building up a power base in hiding. just a shame the game was rather disappointing as a Turrican game having so little exploration---- though I did like some of the bosses like the giant worm's mouth or the spider in space.

Hello there all

The script we have in our hands evolves around the Turrican suit. This movie is about Bren & the Turrican suit. You see, we've found an original way to present the Turrican suit and its functions. I'd say that this suit and the way we present it will definitely become "cult" in the "movie world". Story is set on Avalon in the not so very distant future and it indeed combines places from Turrican 1 and 2. Yet, there is a strong possibility to focus mainly in Turrican 1 environments.
Bren and his best childhood friends enroll for the Avalon, the only Spaceship in the galaxy equipped with the Turrican suits! What happens from there on, I'd prefer not to reveal as it's truly original and would like to keep it safe. What I can say though is that we got some tragic figures in this movie, suspense, bit of horror and strong drama...

Anyhow, no matter how many times we tried, unfortunately there was no reply whatsoever, confirming that THQ had the Turrican rights... We contacted others too but we came up empty handed. It's a pity or even better a curse, to have something that good in your hands and not being able to do anything with it...

Hi.

sounds like a nice idea indeed, and the Turrican suit is of course pretty iconic in the game as well so it would fit in very nicely there.

I really hope you can get hooked up with someone in the film industry to have the script dealt with as it deserves.

perhaps with the recent high interest in Chris Heulsbek's music and the campaign for a new Turrican soundtrack (which i'm pleased to say has worked out well), there might be more interest in turrican generally, indeed you could see about getting Huelsbek on board for the project in person sinse obviously he'd be ideal in adapting the score, and might help in promotion as well sinse he's such a famous cult figure in the game music world.

After all the more interest behind the project, the more likely it is that things will go further, and with enough clout Thq might well take notice too.

We just contacted Chris Heulsbeck productions. We really hope they at least reply!

What movie do you wanna do? Should this be something like a Scifi- Movie (Iron Sky), funded by kickstarter or somewhere else? You need a lot of money to do this. And the story is too bad to do something really serious without much money.

Iron Sky is great, because he is a Joke- Movie about the policy in the world, combinated with some good effects.
The Turrican- Story is strange, more like Transformers or Marvel Hero Movies.
So you can only do 2 things with this: A 50 Mio. Dollar Michael Bay Production (I doubt this could be great and you´ll never get so much money), or a B-Movie with bad effects (No one will see it).

I´m sure one of the biggest Turrican Fans out there (I worked on Metroidican, Turricane 3.5, Morgul Returns, T-All). But I don´t think that a movie is a good idea.

If you wanna do a Metroid- Movie, you could find much more fans on kickstarter for a project like this. Turrican has only a few thousand fans worldwide. That´s not enough.

Hey there Cjoe

I know our effort is ambitious. We have the knowledge of what the "industry" came to be, today. Things are pretty grim it is true. What is pushing us that direction is that we're also self aware. We know for fact that what we have set as main idea for this script is indeed original and can make an impact. We also know that producers and directors are currently after a good scifi-movie. We also know that Paramount was to approve a small budget movie series projects. We kind of hoped to "catch that train" and manage to make something like an introduction movie!
We would have quit but then two writers read our small plot summary and encouraged us not to! This movie could have nothing to do with Turrican to tell you the truth. The thing is that it combines the spacesuit (Turrican) with the movie soundtrack in such unique way that it's a pity not to combine it with that old game's excellent music!

Anyhow, we're still here!

Good you're there fellas

Bren McGuire is one of my childhood's favorite top characters and therefore, for purposes of sci-fi or turrican sites I use this nick.

BY NO MEANS should the character of Bren McGuire - in the time he's young enough to make a charming person (I mean Turrican 2) ... BY NO MEANS SHOULD HE BE MISSING in the movie or film of Turrican.
I know there's not much to derive from the Turrican games, but the main simple plot of Turrican 2 is obvious and should be used - the other stuff between the introduction and the end is secondary and could be solved by the most prominent Turrican zealots. They could question Manfred Trenz himself about the details on landscape how did he mean the landscape and other things... based on this, the rest of the story (in fact, the central part of the story) would be figured out.

However, I wonder whether Turrican 1 is a part of any of the Turricans. I mean, the first Turrican wasn't probably meant to evolve in the way it evolved - into Avalon 1, Bren MCGuire, Col.Striker, The Machine, etc.
I don't know whether it is the person of Bren McGuire inside the first Turrican.

Well, films can derive their basic premise from some very obscure sources. I was frankly shocked for instance when in 1999 the Bbc here in Britain made the comparatively unknown, though well loved by it's fans Gormenghast into a tv miniseries.

it was never a book I thought could! have made a decent convertion to screen, owing to the fact that it's perhaps the only novel I know where the characters and plot are a distant second place to how the book is written, and the fantastic schetches of the characters.

Yet, despite it being a less than suiteable source, and being comparatively unknown, it was made into a successful miniseries by the bbc, which has had video and dvd releases up to this point today.

I've noticed myself that films are becoming more and more generic these days, in fact from hollywood the closest thing we've seen to a half decent scifi film for years (accepting the startrek film), have been a series of one dimentional super hero films which all seem to have broardly speaking the same characters and where the big budgit affects take second place to the plot or interest in the setting, or a huge range of fantasy films that try to recreate what lord of the rings did (I was appauled when the fantastically character driven and wonderfully realized series Avatar the last air bender was turned into a film that was so completely repellent).

so, the scifi genre really could do with a boost, and if Turrican could provide that I'd be more pleased than ever.

for those who've heard of turrican, it will be great, but for everyone else, as has been said, it'll just make a great scifi film.

the only snag as Cjo said is budgit, but if you can contact the right people in the industry this can work itself out.

As to connections betwene the games, well the premise I'm using in my novella and what i always assumed, was that the original turrican took place in the comparatively near future. The hero was himself called Turrican, and destroyed Morgul's invading forces, ending by blowing up his base on the evil moon.

turrican 2 takes place a great deal longer in the future, in 3025, and I've always assumed myself that just as today we have weapons named after great military heroes, like the sherman tanks named for the american general, and the Hercules missiles named after the griek hero, so that the Turrican suit was named after the hero Turrican who destroyed morgul.

Wikipedia's turrican entry has a really weerd plot for Morgul's origins, with morgul being a bio mechanical computer controlling a space colony that rebelled against humans and instead of terraforming the colony, created lots of mutant creatures to serve it, ---- though where this plot comes from goodness nows sinse nothing like it appears in the instructions or indeed the game.

this actually makes me want to get back to my novella, even if writing the 1000 years of galactic history that happen betwene Turrican's defeat of Morgul and Mcguires confrontation with the machine was getting to be quite a monumental task.

Either way, good luck with the film, not only would a Turrican film be fantastic in it's own right, but also we really need to get scifi back into Hollywood I think.

Hello again

Unfortunately our efforts to find support, or a more "reliable" face to represent us in the market has proven to be futile! We're thinking 2 things to do. Either we wait for the economic crises to end here in Greece (not gonna happen unless a miracle pops in) or present the "main idea" in the web, for example at www.Turricanthemovie.com and by concentrating the fans' interest we draw the eyes of the "right people" to us... In time.
Besides that, we would love to know more of what the fans would like to see in this movie. How do they imagine Bren should be as a character? If you feel like sharing, please don't forget to include 3 or more of your top movies, in order for us to understand better your views.

Thank you