Sigourney Weaver turned down Aliens game, interested in 'high-quality' Ghostbusters

by Griffin McElroy on Dec 6th 2008 8:30PM

In a recent interview with MTV News, Sigourney Weaver discussed her potential involvement in two upcoming ludological adaptations of hit 80s films in which she starred. Weaver claimed she turned down an offer to work on an Aliens title as she believed the digi-Ripley portrayed in-game was "not true to the character." She also explained that the resumé of the Aliens developer wasn't too impressive -- one of their past titles was a game "called 'Rednecks', where you shoot animals."

We, and, more notably, Sega (the publisher of the pair of Aliens titles about which the MTV reporter was inquiring) have absolutely no idea what she's talking about. However, her feelings towards Atari's recently acquired adaptation of Ghostbusters were crystal clear -- she's interested in joining the cast, but only if the title is "high-quality." Oh, and if Atari finally greenlights her idea for a video game based on her "hit" 2001 "comedy", Heartbreakers.

Source

Tags: alien, ghostbusters, sigourney-weaver

Reader Comments (79)

I'm pretty impressed that a woman who must be pushing 60 acknowledges that games have the potential to have high-quality storytelling and good characterisation.

And burned on whoever developed Rednecks.

after reading this article an some of the comments left about the aliens movies i went an watched the first one on netflix. It was ok i guess but i remember watching alien ressurection which was number 4 in the series an i thought it was better..maybe cause it was the first one i ever seen or maybe cause it was more futuristicy(not a word i know) lol i don't know i guess in terms of sci fi horror i still think Event Horizon tops em all..that movie was kinda creepy lol it's ok if you don't think so but everytime i see it i always get creeped out. watch it if you haven't seen it before!

Alien Resurrection?!
Event Horizon?!
Really?!

Hahaha, a ha, ha.

Get out.

I enjoyed both Event Horizon and Alien Resurrection. Alien Resurrection is fun to watch just because it was done by the same director that did City of Lost Children and Amélie.

"Get away from that game you BITCH!"

Quasi-Whedon fanboy here, weighing in. His script for Alien: Resurrection was nothing like what made it to the big screen. And if you think Firefly sucked, so be it - I think it's great.

I don't, however, like Buffy very much.

Might as well voice my unpopular opinion again here for further self-punishment... Firefly DOES suck. I'm a sci-fi flick, and sci-fi lit addict, and wanted to love Firefly, and specifically watched it because of that. Holy disappointment in this sci-fi series spray, batman.

there is a difference between stating an opinion like "I did not like firefly" and stating a psuedo-fact like "firefly sucked." In the first case, people understand that you are opining. In the second people assume you are attacking your opinion. With that said. I did not enjoy firefly.

When someone says "x sucked" or "x was awesome", it's obvious they're still talking about their own opinions. Doesn't make a damn bit of difference if they say something like "I think" or not.

Also, Firefly isn't really scifi, it's a space western. Similar, but not really the same thing. Expecting it to be a good scifi is bound to lead to just as much disappointment as expecting Men In Black to be a good drama.

Disagree. This fuzzy sub-genre of sci-fi I've heard tossed around, "space western", exists within the genre of sci-fi. Which already is a broad category encompassing all sorts of different types of literature.

Your analogy is an absolutely and utterly horrible one. Beyond horrible. Nobody in a trizillion (it's like 3 zillion I think) would ever confuse MiB with Drama. It's wholly reasonable and rationale to expect a good dose of sci-fi in Firefly.

Let me give this a try, "Expecting any Star Trek show or movie to be good scifi is bound to lead to just as much disappointment as expecting Men In Black to be a good drama." Agree with that, then?

We're probably both nit-picking here but I get your point. Sci-fi is just so wide a genre of course it's probably never realistic to expect to like any and everything sci-fi, but I was hoping :(

I'm pretty hardcore on Herbert, Asimov, and William Gibson...

Any sci-fi fan owes it to themselves to read Gibson, likely Neuromancer, but that may be just me :P

i just want to say that i watched alien and aliens a few days ago (gotta make use of that netflix streaming..), and those movies were really great, two of the best sci-fi's i've ever seen.. so i fully support isgourney weaver, and whatever choice she makes.

well it's good that you support isgourney weaver but what about sigourney weaver? she's the topic here.

Someone was in a good movie, therefore everything they do and say is good? What a steaming load of blind fanboyism.

I give her praise for that, but then she starred in Aliens IV, which I would say isn't of "high quality".

I would say IV is better than III, by a long shot.

I'm still waiting for Alien V, where the aliens make it to Earth. All you people who didn't go see Alien IV are responsible for our lack of Alien V. And you know what? Alien IV was really good. Jeunet has never done a bad flick, and Joss Whedon didn't muck it up that badly. And Ron Perlman! RON PERLMAN!!!

The aliens already did make it to earth, twice actually. Or you're telling me you haven't seen both Alien Vs Predator movies (and yes i really like them, as much as a lot of people don't).

Wow, that's a dictionary definition of fanboyism there. Alien IV was shit, dude. It amazes me how blind Whedon's fanboys are.

If Firefly sucks then call me blind.

(Never seen an Aliens movie, though. Maybe he did muck that up, I wouldn't know.)

4 better than 3? No way, no way. 4 was an abomination (not unlike that white drippy thing at the end).

You know, in Alien IV, when she throws that basketball into the hoop backwards, Sigourney Weaver actually did that - no special effects or anything. Took her hundreds of takes though.

3 is easily better than 2. Please go back and watch both of them if it's been a few years.

2 is horribly acted and written, it's wince inducing. I didn't notice when I first saw them because I was a kid. Going back and watching them now... I could barely make it to where the action starts. It's an action-thriller aimed at a middle-school audience with big fight scenes, campy one-liners, a brave matronly figure, gadgets, robotsuits, and explosions; James Cameron's non-action directing is unbelievably bad (first scene with Marines).

Weaver was probably the best actor in 2. She's easily the worst in 3 which had decent writing and fantastic acting. But it's too slow, too bloody, too much goofy profanity at the end (the fuck count starts spiraling out of control), and the rousing score is completely out of place. Still, I can imagine watch 3 one more time. 2 not so much, except for a laugh.

4 doesn't exist.

1 is the best.

Pimliconite

You have no idea what you're saying. 2 was a master piece of action - it had *Everything* in it. Even a god damn nuke. And it was made more believable by the marines and Sigourneys tense acting.

Aliens is one of those movies I could watch over and over and over through out time, and every time I see it I'd forgotten how good it is.

OMFG someone actually said Alien 3 is better than Aliens!?!? Can you believe that!? That really just happened!! I might never read a post on this website seriously again because of that.

Funny thing is despite how insane Pimliconite's comments are I still had to up rank him cause his last 2 sentences were pure genius! You're one confused mo-fuca Pimliconite, but I respect it.

@Pimliconte

I guess thats why many video games (sci-fi, fps, RPGs, RTS,) borrow from "Aliens". It was just that bad.

ha there was a lot of quotes in that post. was really trying to put them all together. ha

well i give her props for not selling herself out to just any videogame, cause we all know how movie to game adaptions go...

Ha! Just the other day I was telling my wife about "Rednecks", and she didn't believe me!

Sigourney Weaver has vindicated me!

I didn't even know there were more than two Alien movies...i just knew of Alien and Aliens, NETFLIX here i come!!!

Alien 3 is not bad, but it all goes sharply downhill after that.

OR, it goes UPhill, since the 4th movie is better than the 3rd IMO. The 3rd movie goes back to having just 1 alien like the 1st one, which is lame.

Also i highly recommend BOTH Alien Vs Predator movies.

Just because you keep saying it Foetold, doesn't make it true. 3 was ok but not well liked. Aliens was after all a tough act to follow.

4 was a steaming pile from start to finish. And its my understanding that Joss was brought in late to clean up an existing script. I'm sure he polished that turd as best he could.

I did see both Alien Vs. Predators, they were sweet :D I do think Aliens was one of if not the best sci fi movie ive ever seen

I'm not going to get into an arguement about Aliens 3 and 4.. But AVP2 is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I couldn't sit through more than 30 minutes of that, and then went and sold it on eBay.

It's the only movie I've EVER sold.

"She believed the digi-Ripley portrayed in-game was not true to the character."

It's a shame she turned it down. If she felt the character wasn't true to the roots, I think she could have easily turned that all around. Who better to reprise a role than the actress that portrayed her? In four films, at that. Sigourney Weaver IS Ripley.

Could she possibly have the wrong dev and be thinking of Redneck Rampage?

Randy Pitchford and Brian Martel are the founders of Gearbox, who are making the Aliens game. The two used to work at 3D Realms, which created the Redneck Rampage series.

Wow, I found that out in less than 5 minutes of digging and the "journalists" at Joystiq and MTV can't be bothered to look it up. Pretty sad that Siguorney Weaver knew more about the game industry than you guys did.

If she's talking about Redneck Rampage, then she's being a haggard old bitch (and can't even get the game's name right).

BTW, 3D Realms didn't make Redneck Rampage, they just owned the engine it used (which they had simply bought from Ken Silverman).

The only relation the game has to 3D Realms is the Build engine. it was developed by Xatrix and published by interplay.

@bcjinky:

Hmm, maybe you should have spent a little longer than 5 minutes? Maybe not get all of your information from the Wiki? Not try to be such a smartass? Maybe not have so much faith in your internet detectivery skills? Maybe not try to show off so much to people on the internet?

Yeah that is what I was thinking. Xatrix, who developed the Redneck Rampage games, went on to become Gray Matter studios.

Gray Matter and Gearbox could be confused by some by name alone but they also have similar histories with Gray Matter (Xatrix) getting their start working on a Quake expansion and Gearbox doing a Half-Life expansion around the same time.

From the original article: "And they also showed me six video games and said it was going to be made by this company. There was one called ‘Rednecks’ where they shoot animals."

I think before people start piling on Sigourney for being wrong about this, they should consider that people move around a lot in the industry. It's very likely that whatever producer/designer she spoke with worked somewhere other than Sega or Gearbox in the past. Redneck was published by Interplay, so it could be someone from Interplay works for Sega now...

I may have been wrong about the 3D Realms-Redneck Rampage connection, but it's still bad "journalism" to assume that Sigourney doesn't know what she's talking about. Call her and ask her. That's what a real journalist would do.

joining the cast? Isn't the game a bit too far on for that?

That's what I was thinking.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't record voices before they start the actual animation?

In most animation they often do, because the audio timing is so key

Might be different for games, since a lot of that stuff can be re-rendered later on, unless you're doing FMV

Voices are recorded early on with temp actors, possibly even the writers. The real actors or expensive actors are brought in later when all the dialogues is finalized. At least that's how it works in TV.

@Malkmus: That's how it works in games too.

Unlike movies, games have absolutely no reason to follow the waterfall model. Anything is subject to change throughout most of development, because, hey, not everything will end up working, and one change here may necessitate another change there, etc. It would be stupid to record dialog from an expensive actor early on, because it'll probably end up changing and need to be rerecorded anyway. And games are about gameplay, not cinematics, so lip syncing (as well as voice acting in general) is a very minor issue; unlike in movies, it's icing, not meat and potatoes.

Fuck Sohorny Weaver.

Everybody knows Summer Glau would make a better Ripley.

She's notoriously anti-gun and vehemently protested Ripley's use of firearms in Aliens, and refused to do Alien 3 and Resurrection if they made her use a gun. I'd say the games have some hefty gunplay in them and she wasn't down with that.
She thinks there are better ways to show Ripley is tough besides putting a gun in her hands. Like... giving her retarded superpowers like in Resurrection, or having her run around looking like a man in Alien 3.

| 1 | 2 | Most Recent | Next 50 Comments

Sigourney Weaver turned down Aliens game, interested in 'high-quality' Ghostbusters

Reader Comments (79)

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 8:56PM Haggard said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 4:04AM ILL Thief said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 5:00PM Top Cat said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 9:32PM TomCo said

Posted: Dec 8th 2008 12:19PM Levi Partridge said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:25PM Obienator said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 2:51AM doc j said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 5:51AM MarkezJM said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 11:28AM kaneda26 said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 5:52PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 5:57PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 6:29PM MarkezJM said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:33PM T Newton said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:05PM Sly C said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 6:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:30PM TheCabbage said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:40PM Foetoid said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:45PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:28PM Foetoid said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 12:11AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 1:59AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 2:40AM Orangecoke said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 8:06AM Haggard said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 9:29AM chargen said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 2:30PM MrIronic said

Posted: Dec 8th 2008 1:57AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 8th 2008 10:11AM Negatron said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:35PM leemahi said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:39PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 9:47PM The Kong said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:16PM Obienator said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:30PM Foetoid said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 11:23PM tcc3 said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 11:31PM The Kong said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 6:58AM Snowblind said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:38PM PhydeWice said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:44PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 1:38AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 2:06AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 2:07AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 3:14AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 3:29AM Bastard11 said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 5:20AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 10:49PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 11:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 11:32PM Mr Khan said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 5:26PM Malkmus said

Posted: Dec 7th 2008 6:11PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 11:09PM Youthinized said

Posted: Dec 6th 2008 11:18PM (Unverified) said

Info

Description

MSRP

Release Date

Genre

Developer

Publisher

Rating

Breaking News

WB conjures up Harry Potter for Kinect this fall

Featured Stories

Weekly Webcomic Wrapup is a stranger in a strange land

Silver Lining: I Am Alive's unfeeling world

Game Of Thrones and the paradoxes of adaptation

Engadget

TUAW

Massively

WoW