Mass Effect (film)

Mass Effect is an upcoming film adaptation of the video game of the same name, Mass Effect. The film was officially announced by BioWare on May 24th, 2010.

Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. will co-produce and co-finance the film. Thomas Tull, Jon Jashni, and Avi Arad are producing, with BioWare's own Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Casey Hudson serving as executive producers. Mark Protosevich is writing the screenplay. The project is still in the early stages of development and no Director has been hired or actors cast.

Plot
Despite initially claiming that the film would have an original story featuring Commander Shepard, Legendary Pictures are now stating that the film's plot will be an adaptation of the first game's story, centering on Commander Shepard's journey.

While the game allowed the player to make certain choices as Commander Shepard that affected the plot, including the Commander's gender, this will not be possible in the film medium. As such, the film's writer will be choosing a path that "...best supports the narrative of the movie and the motivations of its characters", while the Commander Shepard of the film will be a male.

Production
Producer Avi Arad originally optioned the rights to adapt Mass Effect in September 2008, however no progress was made until May 2010 when it was announced that Legendary Pictures had acquired the feature rights to the Mass Effect franchise and would be producing the film in a ao-production deal with Warner Bros.. Legendary's own Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni were announced to be producing alongside Arad and it was reported that Mark Protosevich, who had worked on 2007's I Am Legend and 2011's Thor was in talks to write the screenplay.

On July 22, 2011, Legendary Pictures held a pre-production preview panel for some of their upcoming films, including Mass Effect, at San Diego's Comic-Con International. While nothing from the film was shown, Casey Hudson and screenwriter Mark Protosevich talked about the film and revealed some details about the production, such as BioWare's close involvement, their desire to avoid the trend of poor video game adaptations and some details about the plot.