John Wick writer launches grappling hook over to Just Cause video game adaptation

The Just Cause video game series has always been built on unnecessarily dramatic stunts, allowing players to, say, destroy an enemy base by having protagonist Rico Rodriguez fly a fighter jet toward the base, then jump out and ride on top, then shoot at bad guys and jump off the jet just before it collides with something, at which point he defies all of physics and latches onto a nearby ledge with his grappling hook to make a safe landing. It’s not the same kind of stylish cool as the John Wick movies, but there is a similar sense of dedication to doing things in the coolest possible way. It makes sense, then, that Derek Kolstad—the writer behind all three John Wick movies—has been tapped to direct a Just Cause movie for German studio Constantin Film.

According to Variety, the plan is (obviously) to launch a franchise based on the games, which especially makes sense since Square Enix and Avalanche have been dumping these games out pretty regularly for the last few years. We don’t know much beyond that, but thanks to stuff like this and Sony’s new PlayStation-focused movie studio, we seem to be entering a renaissance of video game adaptations—for better or worse, since video game movies are often terrible.