Saints Row movie will take inspiration from The Warriors and Escape from New York

Saints Row: Gat out of Hell — (Image credit: Deep Silver)

Yes, the Saints Row movie announced back in 2019 remains in development, with Fast and Furious 8 director F. Gary Gray on board to direct. Details remain at a premium, though a new interview with screenwriter Greg Russo has revealed which cinematic cornerstones the upcoming adaptation will take inspiration from.

"I looked at different films that I really love," he told Collider. "I'm a big fan of '70s cinema, so I looked at The Warriors, I looked at Escape From New York – just some of those classics. And I said, 'Well, how do we pull from some of those and tell our own unique story?'"

Russo also went on to talk about the difficulties of blending the more realistic tone of the first games with the batshit antics of the later games.

"The tricky thing with something like Saints Row is gonna be tone, right away. 'Cause if you know the franchise, you know that it basically had two tones," he said. "It has more of the gritty tone, which is the first couple [games], and then it goes kind of bonkers and just absolutely insane. And so, we wanted to make sure that we weren't isolating either of those. It's about just trying to find the tonal balance where you have real characters, real stakes... You want it to feel real, you want the characters to feel real, as much as possible. But you also wanna lean into what made it fun, and lean into that craziness."

In other words, Russo has seemingly become Hollywood's go-to screenwriter to adapt video games, though none of his adaptations have yet been released. We'll have to wait until Aril 23, when Mortal Kombat arrives, to find out whether that faith in Russo has been well placed. In the meantime, check out all the upcoming video game movies coming our way.

Jack Shepherd is the former Senior Entertainment Editor of GamesRadar. Jack used to work at The Independent as a general culture writer before specializing in TV and film for the likes of GR+, Total Film, SFX, and others. You can now find Jack working as a freelance journalist and editor.