If you haven’t heard of Prince of Persia, then where’s your rock and I’ll come visit you. It is only one of the most successful franchises in gaming history and has been around since the 1980’s. It has recently been put through the Hollywood movie-making machine with the likes of Jerry Bruckheimer and Jake Gyllenhaal to back it up.

I was given the opportunity to sit in on a group web interview session with 3 other Aussie journalists: Richie Young (The Benny and Richie Show/Bigpond), Ben Slater (myMedia), and Max Everingham (Game State & freelance writer for Gadget Guy, Wolseley Media, Home Entertainment and IGN). The person whom we were interviewing? None other than Jordan Mechner, the Executive Producer and brains behind the Prince of Persia series!

© Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Jerry Bruckheimer, Inc. All rights reserved.

Richie Young (RY): Did you require the cast to play the game?

You, know I think Jake Gyllenhaal played Prince of Persia games – he was pretty into it. Interestingly though, when I was in London and met the crafts people who had actually made the set designs, costumes and so forth sort of working behind the scenes, I found that a lot of them were real gamers and they were pretty deeply into Prince of Persia games.

Ben Slater (BS): Gamers are often sceptical when their beloved series hits the big screen. How do you think loyal PRINCE OF PERSIA fans will react when they see the movie adaptation?

Well I hope they’ll love it. I do. For me, Prince of Persia is the kind of movie that I’ll always love that really inspired me to make the games in the first place, almost like an old-fashioned swashbuckling romantic adventure.

Max Everingham (ME): Most, if not all, videogame-to-film adaptations make a difficult transition and often fail to capture the appeal of the game they’re based on. Why do you think this is and what did you do to try and avoid the common pitfalls?

I think the tricky thing about adapting a video game to film is that games are written to be played whereas films are written to be watched, and the game play is the aspect that doesn’t really come through in the translation. So in adapting Prince of Persia to film, I really set out to write a new story that was tailored to film. I used a lot of elements from the game, but I didn’t try to copy the game story beat-by-beat because I think that wouldn’t have made such a good movie.

GamingAngels (GA): Are there throwbacks to the first game in this movie — anything that we’re going to recognize from that game?

From the first game, well if you’re talking about the first console game “Sands of Time”, absolutely. But I think you’re talking about the very first game – the side-scrolling Apple II game from the 80’s. Not to give anything away, but I will say there’s a bit of portcullis action. There’s some gates in the movie.

RY & BS: Of all the videogames on the market, what were the key elements of Prince of Persia that you felt made it adaptable into a movie?

I think Prince of Persia’s well suited to become a movie for several reasons. The hero is a very sympathetic, relatable human character and he’s a bit of an underdog, there’s a love story, a beautiful princess, a scheming villain, and it’s really an old-fashioned adventure story. It’s set in this fantastic imaginative world of the 1001 nights, and it has a kind of physical action that I think has always translated really well to film.

BS: We’ve heard that the upcoming PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE FORGOTTEN SANDS takes place between THE SANDS OF TIME and WARRIOR WITHIN. Are there any plans to continue with more games in this timeline, or will we move on to a new trilogy?

That’s correct – the upcoming Prince of Persia game “The Forgotten Sands” is in the “Sands of Time” trilogy after the “Sands of Time”, which is the game that the movie is based on. As to what future games would be, I can’t really speak to that – I would need a dagger of time to answer that.

ME: Are you a gamer yourself?

Once a gamer, always a gamer. I wish I had the time to play games as much as did when I was in my 20’s, and games that are coming out now that take 20 or 30 hours to really complete – unfortunately I don’t have that kind of time, so lately I tend to play more casual games. I’ve been having a lot of fun with the Beatles Rock Band.

GA: How do you think the movie will appeal to those people who haven’t played the games? Will it be easy for them to understand the storyline?

In adapting Prince of Persia as a screenplay I think everybody who worked on the movie, Jerry Bruckheimer and Mike Newell, never really saw this as a video game movie. We set out to make a movie for general audiences so that gamers would like it, but also for people who hadn’t played any of the games or hadn’t even played video games at all, it would be a movie that could stand on its own merits.

RY & BS: Are there aspects of the game that you felt wouldn’t work? Therefore left out?

Absolutely. As I mentioned before, the “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” game story was really designed as a story to be played. So for example, in the game the Prince accidentally unleashes the Sands of Time and turns everybody in the world into these zombie-like creatures in the first 15 minutes. And that was a good decision for the game because it gives it a lot of opportunities for combat in game play, but that’s not in the movie because in the movie we wanted to explore a wider aspect of the universe and not turn everybody into sand monsters.

BS: THE SANDS OF TIME was one of our favourite games last generation. Is there any chance that it’ll be re-released, perhaps on a downloadable service in a similar fashion to CALL OF DUTY: CLASSIC, once the film has been released?

I like the idea. The “Sands of Time” is one of my favourite games too – it’s certainly one of my favourite Prince of Persia games. I would love to see it be made available and stay available to people who maybe didn’t catch it the first time around.

BS: Is Jake Gyllenhaal’s portrayal how you imaged Dastan would be in the real world?

I think Jake makes a great Prince Dastan – he looks a lot like the character in the “Sands of Time” video game, but also he has a lot of qualities that for me have always been part of who the Prince of Persia is. He’s a warrior – he does incredible stunts, and parkour, and fighting and so forth. But he also has a mischievous streak, an attitude, and I think a vulnerability that’s a part of the characters appeal.

GA: While working on the original PRINCE OF PERSIA game, did you ever think it would turn into a franchise? Or did you intend for it to be a “one shot” game?

You know, back in the 1980’s when I was programming the first Prince of Persia game on the Apple II, I don’t think I could have imagined it would still be around 20 years later, much less that it would turn into a giant Jerry Bruckheimer film with these epic production values. That’s really more than a dream come true.

BS: Are there any plans, or desires, to continue and adapt more PRINCE OF PERSIA games for the big screen, or even to write entirely new scripts?

I think Prince of Persia’s evolved so much over the last 20 years – there’s so much that could happen in that universe. But as to what’s gonna come next, I’d need a dagger of time. That only works for rewinding into the past – it doesn’t let me see the future.

GA: What is your feeling regarding the final product?

About the movie, I love it and I hope game fans will too. For me, it’s a movie that takes you on a ride and takes you to another place and a world that we haven’t really seen put on screen in this way before so I hope game fans will feel it does justice to the Prince of Persia games and also stands as a film in it’s own right.

BS: PRINCE OF PERSIA was released back in 1989 on the Apple II. Did you ever think at the point that we’d be sitting here talking about its upcoming feature film?

I might have daydreamed, but I think the way it’s actually turned out is actually better than my daydreams.

GA: Can you tell us about the book that will be coming out and if it ties into the game at all?

I guess the question’s about the Prince of Persia graphic novel – that’s a book I’m excited about. It’s sort of a prequel to the movie, that is it’s sort of setting up the characters and world of the movie as distinct from the games. But in writing it, a lot of the fun for me was to look back over the last 20 years of all the games and the way that the franchise has evolved, and go back and include little winks and nods to the games in the story, so I hope you’ll like the book. I actually have 2 graphic novels coming out this Spring – one is Prince of Persia, and the other is an original swashbuckling action-adventure not based on Prince of Persia. Those will both be coming out shortly before the movie.

Many thanks to Jordan Mechner and Walt Disney for allowing me to participate in this interview! The “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time” movie will premiere on 28th May 2010 in America, and 27th May 2010 in Australia. I look forward to seeing it, and it is not just because of Jake Gyllenhaal. For now though, take a look at the theatrical trailer for the movie:

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