Combine Evil Dead‘s Ash and They Live‘s Nada and you get Duke Nukem, the 80s-inspired badass who once starred in a series of really cool video games.
Now, after years in development over at Paramount, Gearbox Software is teaming with Assassin’s Creed producer Jean-Julien Baronnet to adapt the video game into a feature film, Variety reports.
As the site notes, Gearbox had been working on Duke Nukem with Paramount Studios and Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes, with John Cena rumored as a possible star earlier this year. Paramount, however, is no longer involved in the project.
According to the story, they’re going back to square one. Gearbox’s Sean Haren, the company’s vice president of business development, and Baronnet from Marla Studios have been meeting with writers in recent weeks to start preparing a package for a potential Duke Nukem film. They assert that the brawny Nukem — who uses catchphrases like “piece of cake,” “see you hell” and “so help me Duke” — has solid potential as a live-action movie character.
“He’s a parody of 1980s action heroes and he’s like Deadpool in terms of being able to break the fourth wall,” Haren said.
“We see a lot of humor in his confronting the values of today while trying to save the world.”
Baronnet agrees, adding, “Duke is exactly the kind of very blunt character that we need in the world today.”
Duke Nukem first appeared in the 1991 eponymous video game, developed by Apogee Software, as a muscular cigar-chomping man who always wears Ray-Bans and sports a flat-top haircut as he fights aliens to save planet Earth by using enormous physical strength and his expertise in firearms. He’s appeared in 19 video games as the title character, most recently in “Duke Nukem 3D: World Tour”.