The Mafia (Werewolf) Party Game Is Now a Big Budget Russian Feature Film

PatrickJS

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The Mafia (Werewolf) Party Game Is Now a Big Budget Russian Feature Film

A film based on the venerable survival game, where players try to suss out the traitors among them before they're all dead, is coming in January.

Board game movies have a difficult history. We've had at least one good film based on a classic tabletop game (I'm looking at you, Clue), but there have been quite a few stinkers - Battleship; Ouija; arguably the Dungeons and Dragons movie [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/142873-Vin-Diesel-Will-Only-Appear-in-a-Dungeons-Dragons-Movie-if-it-is-Very-Sacred]. Despite this, I can't deny my excitement at the prospect of a movie coming out based on one my first and favourite board game loves.

I first encountered the game as Loup-Garou, French for Werewolf, but many people in the world know it as Mafia. That's the name the upcoming film will be using.

In the game, each player is assigned an allegiance: you are either a "good guy," or "villager;" or you are a "gangster" or a "werewolf." Each night, when all players close their eyes, the baddies secretly vote to kill a member of the other team. Each morning, upon discovering the grisly remains of their friend (this is all usually narrated by a game master of some kind), every player votes and argues over who they think is a bad guy.


Slashfilm [http://www.slashfilm.com/wtf-mafia-movie/] is reporting that its budget is upwards of twenty-five million dollars. Here's the synopsis:

"Mafia" is an action thriller, based on the famous interactive survival game - Mafia. The action takes place in the distant future in Moscow, Russia. Mafia game is a world-wide phenomenon, now the most popular television show ever. Every year, eleven fearless volunteers, from all walks of life, gather together to find out - who are the innocent civilians, and who are the ruthless Mafia. A game, that the outcome of which determines who will live, and who will die. Those who die are hunted by their worst fears, in elaborate and horrifying ways, while the whole world watches in rapacious awe. There are only two ways out, to win and become wildly rich and famous, or to lose and vanish forever into the abyss of your nightmares.

The game has a Russian pedigree - it was invented in the USSR by Dmitry Davidoff in 1986.

This is going to be awful.

I can't wait to see it.

It is reminiscent of the under-appreciated Georgian-French film Treize Tzameti, about a secret "Russian roulette" tournament, if that film had any kind of budget and was also totally terrible.

I'd like to put a question to Escapist readers, now. What do you think has given us better films - video games, or board games? Which has the most potential? Personally, I can't think of any game-based movie better than Clue, but I am eager to know what you guys think!

Source: Slashfilm [http://www.slashfilm.com/wtf-mafia-movie/]



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RealRT

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Being Russian and knowing what 90% of post-Soviet cinema is like... this is gonna suck. Hard.
 

Li Mu

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RealRT said:
Being Russian and knowing what 90% of post-Soviet cinema is like... this is gonna suck. Hard.
I'm not Russian (like you), but I work in Moscow, and I have to say that considering how obsessed my Russian friends are with the game 'Mafia', this is going to make a lot of money!
 

RealRT

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Li Mu said:
RealRT said:
Being Russian and knowing what 90% of post-Soviet cinema is like... this is gonna suck. Hard.
I'm not Russian (like you), but I work in Moscow, and I have to say that considering how obsessed my Russian friends are with the game 'Mafia', this is going to make a lot of money!
And both facts are extremely sad (well, that the movie is going to suck and that it's going to make money, not that your friends are obsessed with the game).
 

Level 7 Dragon

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Could somebody answer me why does far future Moscow looks like a Giger painting soaked in glowstick liquid? Since the actual city seems to resemble a collection of rectangles, than organic steel tubes.
 

Kahani

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PatrickJS said:
interactive survival game
In other words, game. If it wasn't interactive, it wouldn't be one. Also, surely Mafia is little more than a generic murder mystery, so what exactly is the difference between this and any other murder mystery that doesn't claim to be based on a game? Clue at least has recognisable characters, location and weapons, so it has an obvious connection to the game even though there are very clear similarities to other murder mysteries (Agatha Christie in particular). But everything in Mafia is entirely down to whatever an individual group of players decides, so it's basically impossible for it to be anything other than entirely generic.
 

Fulbert

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Level 7 Dragon said:
Could somebody answer me why does far future Moscow looks like a Giger painting soaked in glowstick liquid? Since the actual city seems to resemble a collection of rectangles, than organic steel tubes.
The modern-day Moscow is pretty eclectic in its architectural style. The 60's and 70's apartment blocks downtown are being torn down and replaced by all sorts of weirdly shaped office buildings. So you could imagine that the far-future cityscape could resemble a pile of random geometric shapes.
 

Cowabungaa

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Wait, they...they just...copypasted the actual game in a weird sci-fi setting with awful CGI, terrible dubbing and melodramatics?

Oh my God this is going to be so bad. Aka; I wanna see it, oh yes.
 

Level 7 Dragon

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Fulbert said:
Level 7 Dragon said:
Could somebody answer me why does far future Moscow looks like a Giger painting soaked in glowstick liquid? Since the actual city seems to resemble a collection of rectangles, than organic steel tubes.
The modern-day Moscow is pretty eclectic in its architectural style. The 60's and 70's apartment blocks downtown are being torn down and replaced by all sorts of weirdly shaped office buildings. So you could imagine that the far-future cityscape could resemble a pile of random geometric shapes.
True. I live in the city myself and its quite a salat of architecture, in a good way, though the design looks like Blade Runner if it was digested by the space jockey from Alien, which stresses my suspention of disbelief. Credit to the film, at least thet didnt use the clichee Apple store medical white interiors which are far to common in Sci-fi films nowadays.

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