Saints Row Movie Will Be Influenced by The Warriors, Escape from New York

What if you took the open-world charms Grand Theft Auto, crossed it with the gonzo crime opera of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy, and threw in the hyper-muscled power of an Infamous to boot? You’d have something like Saints Row, the video game franchise that began with your classic street gang open world narratives, but has since evolved into something weirder, wilder, and more purposefully hilarious. Like, “your character can become the President and also fight a bunch of aliens“ hilarious. Greg Russo, co-writer of the recent Mortal Kombat adaptation, is writing the screenplay for the Saints Row movie, and during my MK Zoom interview with him, I asked him about the difficulties that come with turning such a wild, open world into one coherent story. Russo admitted some of the difficulties, while singing the praises of his director to boot: “It’s a tricky one, right? I love the franchise, I’ve played all the games, huge fan of it. And we have a director, F. Gary Gray, who’s attached to it, who’s an ama