Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone Make Video Game Debuts in Beowulf

Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone Make Video Game Debuts in Beowulf

Ubisoft has enlisted the help of film stars Sir Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone for the upcoming Beowulf game based on the movie. This marks the first time that Hopkins and Winstone will work on a game. Other talent from the movie have signed up for the game as well.

Video game publisher Ubisoft, which is developing an original Beowulf game for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC and PSP that spans 30 years beyond the upcoming Paramount Pictures film, has enlisted Hollywood actors to reprise their virtual roles.

Academy Award winner Anthony Hopkins makes his video game debut bringing King Hrothgar to life. In the new game, Hopkins serves as a narrator and taunts the player throughout the game, following his death in the first act.

“With Anthony Hopkins acting you get shivers,” said Gabrielle Shrager, the writer of the Beowulf game from Ubisoft’s Tiwak Studios. “These actors knew their roles from the movie so they brought another dimension to it. They had the backstory with them. Doing voice acting is not easy. As soon as they saw the text, they rolled back into it.”

Ray Winstone, who stars as Beowulf, Brendan Gleeson (Wiglaf), and Sebastien Roche (Wulfgar), will also provide their voices and likeness to the video game. The film, which was directed by Academy Award winner Robert Zemeckis, was written and executive produced by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary.

“Ray Winstone has an incredible voice,” said Shrager, who was in all of the recording sessions. “Even though I don’t like to have my character talk for me, when he goes off on the carnal language it’s just great. It’s incredibly powerful. On the other end, when he is heroic and yells lines like, ‘For the Kingdom,’ it’s really moving.”

The reprisal of their film roles in the Beowulf game marks the actors’ first-ever appearance in a video game, and further demonstrates the close collaboration between Ubisoft, Paramount Pictures and Shangri-La Entertainment.

“This is the first time I’ve worked on a video game, and I must say it was one of the hardest working days of my career,” said Winstone. “But it was vital to capturing the power of the film and translating that into a great gaming experience. Beowulf is a brutal character, a Dark Age-gangster with both hero and monster in him … as a player, I can identify with the monster slayer.”

The Beowulf video game features exclusive content that is unexplored by the film and even the classic tale, extending the adventure through 30 years of the Beowulf story. The game and 20 minutes of the film were shown at Comic-Con this summer.

“It was completely performance capture,” said Gaiman after a Comic-Con screening of 20 minutes of the 3D CGI movie. “What you’re seeing is the performance. That’s Anthony Hopkins performance down to the twitching of his muscles – in November 2005 in a studio in LA not much bigger than this movie theater.”

Gaiman compared the full motion-capture in the film to the cast of Tron performing in Shakespeare’s theater in the round.

“There was that kind of quality,” said Gaiman. “They would go all the way through a scene and capture the performance. That’s performance capture. It’s digitally enhanced acting.”

Shrager said the actors, who had originally done the performance capture in 2005, found it easy to step back into character in the recording studio for the new game.

“The actors seamlessly translated their characters’ depth and emotion, breathing life into their video game roles as they did for the film,” said Shrager.

“It’s the oldest story in the English language told with the most modern technology available,” said Avary, referring to the film. But the same holds true for the new game from Ubisoft.