Chris Wedge to Direct 'Spore' Movie

Source: Variety

20th Century Fox and EA Games have tapped Ice Age writer/director Chris Wedge and his Blue Sky Studios to create a movie based on Spore, the recent video game by The Sims creator Will Wright. Greg Erb and Jason Oremland, who wrote the script for Disney's upcoming traditionally-animated Princess and the Frog, are taking on the writing duties, and the film, like Ice Age, will be computer-animated.

The game allows players to create a race that will evolve from a spore to a complex animal over the course of time and share them with other players. At the end of each stage, the player's creature will be assigned different characteristics and evolve in a unique way based on the decisions the player has made, creating wildly different and unique "spore" characters for each player. One of the game's producers at developer Maxis says that over 100 million unique spore creatures have been uploaded to the game's website since it was released last year.

This summer, the 3D-enhanced Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs racked up a hefty $195.3 million domestically, but its real success was overseas, where it pulled in a massive $667.1 million dollars.