Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic film being written by Altered Carbon showrunner
Whoever plays Carth, we lose.
It's still early days yet, but there's a Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic film in development. As reported by Buzzfeed last night, Laeta Kalogridis (Writer on Altered Carbon, Shutter Island, Alita: Battle Angel among others) is nearly done on a script for the first in a possible KOTOR film trilogy. I'm surprised that the whole Old Republic setting hadn't been tapped for any film or animation projects previously, as it's jam packed with fun worlds to explore, strange new aliens for the CGI crew to flex their artistic muscle on, and a straightforward story, if they're following the game itself.
While it's nice that Lucasfilm/Disney are exploring the Old Republic setting for future Star Wars films, a screenplay doesn't mean much at this stage in production. There's every chance that the finished product could be rejected, sent back to the drawing board, or entirely rewritten by someone else. Still, Kalogridis does seem a good pick for adapting stuff from one medium to another. Wary as I was, Alita: Battle Angel managed to cram several manga story arcs into a single film's time-span. Messy, perhaps, but far more accurate to the source material than it had any right to be.
Given that Knights Of The Old Republic launched way back in 2003, there's a chance that some of you have never had the pleasure of playing it. Developed by BioWare, it's a straightforward party-based RPG with pausable real-time combat. BioWare would re-use its format for the likes of Dragon Age later on, even including a long lineage of 'charming murder-machine' party members inspired by assassin droid HK-47. While perhaps a little conservative in its overall storytelling (minus a nice late-game twist), its bantering, bickering party members charmed a lot of folks.
Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic is available for £7.19/€8.19/$9.99 across Steam, Humble, Origin and GOG. It plays mostly nice with modern PCs, but the PC Gaming Wiki has some handy tech tips. The Restoration Mod also restores a handful of scenes, characters and items to the game and squashes some old bugs too. Worth a look.