In an interview with IGN, The Coalition’s studio head Rod Fergusson revealed the Gears of War movie is being excluded from the franchise’s canon.

Loading

Loading

“In order for the movie to be successful, it has to be a great movie first and a Gears movie second,” Fergusson said. “Basically the way that we sort of reconciled that was, we said, ‘oh the movie should be an alternate reality. It should not be dependent on the game story, nor should it influence the game story.’”Fergusson said by doing this, they’d not only allow there to be more room for potential with what could happen in the movie but to allow new creatives with different processes to think about the Gears world in a unique way. Fergusson said they take this approach with all the Gears worldbuilding media, like the Gears of War books and comics.“I've heard of other franchises who come with this really large story Bible and this really sort of, here are all the rules now go and deal with 700 pages of how you live in our world,” Fergusson said. “When we did it, we were two pages. I was like, ‘Here's two pages of thou shall nots and recommendations.’ We want people to have the freedom to have new ideas and to take things differently.”That being said, there are still staples of the franchise that will be true for the movie. For instance, Fergusson said that it should be set on Sera and star certain characters for it to be a meaningful Gears story.The Gears of War movie was first confirmed in development at Universal back in October 2016 . F. Scott Frazier (Collide, xXx: Return of Xander Cage) is reportedly writing the Gears movie as of November 2018. There haven’t been any casting announcements for the movie, but Dave Bautista said he’d consider playing Marcus Fenix a “dream role.” For more news from the Gears of War franchise, be sure to check out the Gears 5 Escape preview and read why Gears won’t be getting a battle royale mode anytime soon

Miranda Sanchez is an executive editor at IGN, and she really hopes there's some reference to the Carmine family in the Gears movie. You can chat with her about video games and anime on Twitter.