Jake Gyllenhaal in Prince of Persia: First Images!!

So a year ago, when it was announced that The Prince of Persia franchise was going to get the hollywood treatment, i was ecstatic. It was a brilliant franchise to start a movie, but at the same time, there could always be a million and one ways to get it wrong. It was also disappointing when i heard that the prince, of Persia, would not be a persian actor after all. They decided to go with Jake Gyllenhaal. I was like WHAT?! Are you crazy?! I mean, we have the all mighty Jerry Bruckheimer, the maker of various hit TV shows, and mega movie franchises (Think CSI, Amazing Race, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy, National Treasure). We also have Mike Newell to direct the film. So i guess the franchise is in safe hands right? Well maybe.

Considering that ive played all the 3 modern Prince of Persia game titles, I thoroughly enjoyed the first and the third installments of the games. Its also kinda cool that the movie is gonna be loosely based on the trilogy, adding to the fact that the title of the movie is Prince of Persia, the Sands of Time. So naturally, you would think that the story, the environments, the theme and finally the costumes would be based on the first installment of the game. Well not so.

Finally the images of Jake Gyllenhaal in his princely costume have been released all over the internet. In all its glory with the cosmetics, and dirt,dust on his body and face.

The moment i saw this picture, i told myself. It looks good. In fact, it was better than i expected really. I had little to no faith in having Jake play out this important role, but after looking at this image, he might, JUST might, play a good role as a prince in the upcoming movie.By the looks of it, he certainly has gained some mass just to play out in this nimble and acrobatic prince. So far it has been a faithful reproduction of the original video game franchise. Just look at the concept image of the prince. (click to see it bigger)

Pretty good huh? But what got me puzzled is why this costume? This costume is used in the third part of the series, Prince of Persia The Two Thrones. Is the producer using materials from all 3 parts of the game to make a single movie? Are they mixing certain video game elements of all three games to give unique flavour for the movie? Whats the storyline like? Are they going to follow certain elements of the first movie, or all three, or something completely different?  Only time will tell and we have more than 2 years to speculate before the movie is officially released in summer of 2010.

It was originally slated for summer of 09, but it got pushed back a year. Reports states the delay was to give more time for post production and special effects team to really make a good movie and be successful in bringing life to this amazing franchise onto the big screen. Others state that the competition for next year’s blockbuster movies, mainly the release of Transformers 2, would dampen the potential success of Prince of Persia. It would be interesting to see Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer battle it out during the period, but it seems that this would not be the case any more.

For fans of Prince of Persia (like me) a brand new video game franchise is in the works, the first due end of this year. The new game would feature new gameplay styles, new graphics direction, a new female character, Elika, and above all, an all new Prince.