Fast Facts About Gamer Starring Gerard Butler
Sci-Fi Thriller Also Features Michael C. Hall, Amber Valletta
Aug 25, 2009 Leslie C. Halpern
The story of Gamer centers around Kable (Gerard Butler of 300), who was taken from his family, imprisoned, and forced to fight against his will in a first-person shooter game called “Slayers.” Kable becomes a cult hero as a modern-day gladiator as he fights his way to victory led by the teenaged gamer (Logan Lerman of Hoot) who controls him.
Kable’s wife (Amber Valletta of Transporter 2) faces her own problems while trapped in another game called “Society.” Slayers was created by an egomaniacal billionaire (Michael C. Hall of Dexter) who enables audiences to act out violent fantasies in front of a global audience using mind-controlled real prisoners as avatars. A rebel group called “Humanz” sees the games as a threat to humanity.
Additional Cast of Gamer
Chris “Ludacris” Bridges plays the head of Humanz, the group trying to enlist Kable’s aid in destroying the games. Bridges admits to being an avid gamer himself off-screen.
Kyra Sedgwick (star of television’s The Closer) takes on the role of Gina Parker Smith, a media celebrity sympathetic to the Humanz’s mission to overthrow the billionaire’s evil plans.
Other actors attracted to the project agreed to appear in cameos, including John Leguizamo, Alison Lohman, Keith Jardine, Milo Ventimiglia, Zoe Bell, Richard “Mack” Machowicz, Keith David, James Roday, Maggie Lawson, Lloyd Kaufmann, and Efren Ramirez.
About the Filmmakers of Gamer
Filmmakers Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor created three unique worlds within the film. The simulated reality game “Slayers” resembles a massive, multiplayer battlefield for mind-controlled soldiers; “Society” is a social networking community for fetishists; and there's the real world outside the games that exists within the movie.
“Each [world] has its own look and feeling, its own set of visual rules – from color to camera movement to effects to set design,” Neveldine explained in a prepared statement.
In addition to Gamer, writers-directors Neveldine and Taylor also worked together (writing, producing, directing) on the high-energy action film Crank High Voltage starring Jason Statham.
About the Production of Gamer
The directors used a new RED digital camera system that incorporates compact flash cards instead of digital tape. The system had never been tested on an action film before.
Production designer Jerry Fleming and the directors opted for real, working locations (re-purposed into strange new environments) rather than building entire sets on soundstages. Altogether, Fleming created 20 major sets for the project.
Playing living avatars means that the actors (unlike their years of training dictate) could not react intuitively to any given situation. Instead, the characters moved a fraction of a second after their controller made the move. The actors also worked to take fluidity out of the movements in order to appear less naturalistic and more like avatars.
- In this futuristic sci-fi action thriller, humans control real people in mass-scale, multiplayer online games.
- Directors: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
- Writers: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor
- Additional Cast: Michael C. Hall, Amber Valletta, Logan Lerman, Alison Lohman, Terry Crews, John Liguizamo, Chris “Ludicris” Bridges, Kyra Sedgwick
- Rating: R (for frenetic sequences of strong brutal violence throughout, sexual content, nudity, and language)
- Release Date: September 4, 2009
For more information about new movie releases, read Science Fiction, Horror Movie Preview Fall 2009.
Gamer Stars Gerard Butler
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