While a movie script based on the Fruit Ninja series of mobile games has already been ordered back in May, many were still skeptical about the likelihood of this project actually happening. How does one make a movie based on a game about slicing falling pieces of fruit? Well, J.P. Lavin and Chad Damiani apparently know the answer to that question as they are just finishing up work on the first draft of their Fruit Ninja screenplay and numerous film studios already had quite a bidding war over who gets to shoot the script. That war has actually just ended as Hollywood Reporter’s sources revealed that New Line Cinema won the rights to the Fruit Ninja-based movie.
The movie is apparently going to be a family-friendly live-action comedy about a group of ordinary Joes and Janes who happen to be drawn into this whole fruit-slicing business and somehow save the world somewhere along the way. Sounds ridiculous? Maybe, but if Angry Birds could do it, why can’t Fruit Ninja? In any case, the choice of Lavin and Damiani as screenwriters sounds pretty good as the duo already has quite a bit of experience with writing silly Hollywood movie adaptations, having recently penned the script for Chuck Sambuchino’s hilarious novel How to Survive a Garden Gnome Attack.
Regarding other details, the Fruit Ninja movie is going to be produced by Tripp Vinson while Sam White and Tara Farney will serve as executive producers on the project. According to Hollywood Reporter’s sources, Halfbrick Studios, the developers behind the original game series are allegedly intimately involved with the movie’s production so we can hopefully expect an authentic Fruit Ninja adaptation whatever that even means. Alexis Ehrman has also just been confirmed as an associate producer but that’s about all we know so far. The casting process for the movie is expected to start later this year and no one yet dares to predict when Fruit Ninja could debut in cinemas.
For the uninitiated, New Line Cinema is a Los Angeles-based studio acquired by Warner Bros. in 2008 that had an infamous falling out with Peter Jackson after claiming that it has lost money by investing in his The Lord of the Rings trilogy. In recent years, New Line has been involved in the production of several popular movies such as The Conjuring, Straight Outta Compton, San Andreas, and Central Intelligence.