David Jaffe talks about Hollywood convergence and his upcoming Twisted Metal title

David Jaffe, the co-director and lead designer of Twisted Metal, was in Los Angeles to reveal new multiplayer mayhem for the October 4 reboot on PlayStation 3. The press event featured a full-scale Sweet Tooth ice cream truck and props from the gruesome live action cinematics that will tell the backstory of each of the game’s characters for the campaign mode.

Gamers may also be learning more about these characters from Sony’s oldest game franchise (it launched way back in 1995 on PlayStation) in a big screen movie from Arad Productions, which is in development. Producer Avi Arad was behind some of the biggest Marvel comic book movies of all time, including X-Men, Spider-Man, and Iron Man. But what Jaffe really would like to see is a low-budget snuff movie featuring the face of the franchise, Sweet Tooth. The head of development studio Eat Sleep Play talks about going Hollywood in this exclusive interview.

Digital Trends (DT): What have the advances in technology since 1994 opened up for you creatively with this new game?

Certainly, technological advances have opened things up creatively, but what they’ve really let us do in this game is fully realize the original game designed that Scott Campbell, Allan Becker, Mike Giam and I had back in 1994. We had these amazing visions of this Michael Bay or Michael Mann action movie going down the 405 freeway in LA, with car combat out of Mad Max and a potpourri of explosions. And you just couldn’t do that on a PS One. It got better every time Sony released successive hardware. But with this game, we have helicopters, which was always part of the original fantasy. We have semi-trucks and we’ve expanded beyond the one-on-one battles to allow up to 16 players to battle it out at the same time.

DT: Speaking of making a Michael Bay movie-like game, what are your thoughts on Arad Productions optioning Twisted Metal for a big screen adventure?

Look, the minute I sat down with Ari and Avi Arad, I was like, “Oh my God, you’re f***ing Avi Arad. I’m a huge, huge movie fan, probably only eclipsed by how big of a Marvel fan I am. So the fact that I’m sitting in room with these guys is pretty sweet. I hope they make (the Twisted Metal movie). I like those guys. I hear great things about Ghost Rider 2, I love Spider-Man. We sat down in a meeting and showed them the new game and they said they think they can make a movie out of it. But you know how it goes in Hollywood. I’m not holding my breath for the Twisted Metal movie or the God of War movie. I want them to happen, but you know, I haven’t heard anything other than they are pro and high on Twisted. I think it would be a great movie.

DT: What’s your vision of what a Twisted Metal movie should be?

I think it would be a great B movie. I keep telling Sony, “Guys, give us $1.5 million. Let’s just got make a PSN exclusive movie just about Sweet Tooth as a slasher. Let’s have him take his place next to Freddy and Jason and Michael Meyers and Candy Man and all these great cinematic slashers in the movies.” I would just f***ing do that. I don’t even need a f***ing car. Do that later. We’ll do a prequel with just Sweet Tooth as a killer. I think it would be so much fun. I love that we can get into these characters’ worlds with these properties. That’s a lot of fun.

DT: There’s a digital precedent now for a PSN movie with Warner Bros. filming the Mortal Kombat live action series.

I saw the first one, but I didn’t see the whole series. I was very impressed by it. It was very, very cool, absolutely. I would want our (digital series) to look more low budget, though. I think if we were to do the Sweet Tooth slasher movie, it should be raw and it should almost look like a snuff film, you know? It should look like you found the footage…like in that Nicolas Cage movie 8mm. It should look like you found this sh*t and it’s like, “F**k, did Sweet Tooth document this? How did he get this footage?” That’s how it needs to make you feel…it needs to make you sick.

DT: The cinematics in the new Twisted Metal game look pretty gruesome.

Yeah, but that’s not like what I’d want the movie to look like. This is a Teen-rated game. But I think you can play with these characters just like in comic books and you can tell stories that take place in different worlds. Like you have the Batman movies, but then there are the Batman video games. The essence is still there but they’re different characters. So for me, the Sweet Tooth slasher movie’s got to be raw. For Twisted Metal, it’s more like a really fun, twisted comic book.

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