GamerGate is still very much alive but the heat has died down a bit ever since Zoe Quinn was thrust in the spotlight when her ex-boyfriend's blog rant went viral. The game designer has been through a lot since then, including writing a memoir, which has been picked up by Pascal Pictures to be developed into a movie.
Crash Override: How To Save The Internet From Itself was first sold to Touchstone/Simon & Schuster and is due to be published in September 2016. Several TV outlets and studios have bid on the memoir but it was Amy Pascal's Pascal Pictures that beat the competition, gearing up to finance as Pascal, Entertainment 360 and Rachel O'Connor produce. Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo are set to adapt.
Entertainment 360 managed to get their hands on the book proposal early, creating the package as screenwriters (journalists previously working for the Wall Street Journal) met. After the memoir was shopped, Pascal Pictures stepped up, gaining the right to take first crack at developing Quinn's story for the big screen.
Proposed with a title called Control Alt Delete, the movie deal tells the story of the Depression Quest game designer as she was targeted by an internet mob hell bent on upending her life as a result of her ex-boyfriend's viral blog post. If the internet turned on you, most people would slink away until the issue died down but Quinn chose instead to fight back, fanning the flames to bring the controversy, which went on to highlight sexism in video game culture, to the forefront. This will be at the heart of her memoir (and subsequently, the resulting movie).
Quinn, of course, is in the best position to describe the potential movie. According to her, internet and gaming message boards used to feature niche interests that generally catered to young men. In recent years, however, these message boards have gone mainstream, with millions of people, including those marginalized and women, taking to the internet to become part of a platform that used to belong to just a select few.
Those up in arms about protecting their little boys' club are actually the minority (Quinn said most gamers just want to play their games), but the problem is that they are more vocal. And it doesn't help that they are clinging to a certain brand of the "hardcore gamer" and passing off that identity as the only one legitimate.
With its affiliation with Pascal Pictures, Sony has first dibs to see the results of the project before it makes its rounds to other studios. Given it has a stake in the gaming community, Sony runs the risk of angering (some) fans by releasing the movie but how the project will truly impact the gaming community is yet to be seen.
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