Jordan Mechner: The Man Who Would Be Prince
With the Prince Of Persia film currently one of the biggest silicon to screen adaptations yet attempted, we thought we’d catch up with the game’s creator, Jordan Mechner – the man who defined platforming adventures as we know them – to discuss his past, present and future.
After the commercial failure of The Last Express and the closure of Smoking Car Productions, Mechner continued to build his no-budget film repertoire. He was eventually contacted by Don Normark, the author of a book called Chavez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story, which examined the destruction of a working-class Mexican-American community to make way for the development of low-cost public housing. Normark had seen Mechner’s 1993 student film, Waiting For Dark, and believed he was the right person to make a documentary on the subject.
“Making Chavez Ravine was an experience like nothing else I’ve done,” says Mechner. “Former residents have told
me how much the film has meant to them, even that it brought their families closer together. As a filmmaker, that’s the best accolade I could wish for. I’m grateful to everyone who put their hearts and talents into bringing the film to completion and, especially, to Don Normark for trusting me with his story.”
Mechner’s film won the International Documentary Association award for Best Short Documentary in 2003, and was short-listed for an Academy Award in 2005. However, the production of Chavez Ravine coincided with a renewed interest in the Prince Of Persia license at Ubisoft. “Prince Of Persia [was] at that time a decade-old ‘classic’ – i.e., dead – franchise,” says Mechner. “The project was developed at Ubisoft’s Montreal studio under the leadership of producer Yannis Mallat, who is now CEO of Ubisoft Montreal. For his talented young team… it was a chance to show the world a franchise reboot done right; for an old-timer like me… it was the project that reawakened my joy in making videogames.”
Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time was an unalloyed triumph, sweeping the Game of the Year awards across Xbox, PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2003. As Ubisoft took the Prince in a darker, more violent direction than Mechner would have chosen for its two sequels, he seized the opportunity to pitch Jerry Bruckheimer a movie version of the game in 2004. To Mechner’s great surprise, Bruckheimer accepted, and challenged the game designer to adapt his videogame franchise into a blockbuster film. It was everything Mechner had dreamed of: he was the architect of one of the most beloved videogames of all time, and now had the chance to convert it into an epic adventure with the backing of some of the biggest names in cinema.
Between writing the screenplay and the imminent release of the film, Mechner has used his rising stock to branch out into other areas of the entertainment industry. He has shown a particular fondness for graphic novels, penning both a Prince Of Persia book and his latest original creation, Solomon’s Thieves, which will be published this year. Having successfully adapted his own work into a major Hollywood event, he is now preparing to adapt the late Michael Turner’s comic series Fathom, with Megan Fox attached to star.
Clearly, Mechner has already had one hell of an adventure, but this could be the beginning of a larger, even more extraordinary journey. He is a part of something bigger now – a peerless cog in a contraption made of peerless cogs – but he will never forget what it has taken to arrive at this point.
“What amazes me about the evolution, or explosion, of Prince Of Persia over the past 20 years is that it’s gone so far beyond what I could encompass myself. The number of people who have worked on Prince Of Persia projects – games, movies, books, and now toys – is beyond counting. A few projects, like Sands Of Time, the movie, and the graphic novel, I had my hands on directly; they’re close to my heart, I’m proud of the work I did on them. At the other end of the spectrum, there are versions of the game I haven’t played, books I’ve never read, and, in a weird way, I’m proud of those too, because even though they’re not my own work, they still came from Prince Of Persia. It’s pretty incredible that all this started with an Apple II game that fit in 48K of memory.”
for all the latest videogames news, reviews, previews, interviews and features, while our 
fan page is the best place to communicate with other fans of games™ magazine.
