F. Gary Gray is headed to Saints Row. The Men In Black: International director will helm a Saints Row movie based on the video game series. Greg Russo, writer of the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot, is handling the script, which will follow a gang known as the Third Street Saints. The game series was launched in 2006, and became progressively weirder and sillier with subsequent installments.

Gray’s Fenix Studios, Koch Media and Occupant Entertainment are teaming up to bring Saints Row to the big screen. The four-game series (and, presumably, the movie) “tells the story of the rise of the Third Street Saints as they battle rival gangs, furries and even aliens in an attempt to conquer the fictional cities of Stilwater and Steelport, ultimately elevating their leader to President of the United States.” Here’s some more detail, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Saints Row is an action-adventure video game series created by Volition and published by Deep Silver, that tells the story of a gang called the Third Street Saints; the title comes from the name of the district of the gang’s home territory. Typically, gameplay is presented in an open world format because of the mixture of nonlinear gameplay with action-adventure and racing sequences. The series is known for its comedic elements. The games’ stories are written as comedies that feature popular culture homages and parodies, as well as self-referential humor.

Saints Row started off as your standard Grand Theft Auto knock-off, but each new game grew more and more strange – and became more interesting as a result. Hopefully the film will lean into the weirdness instead of being a generic action movie. I sincerely hope this movie adaptation focuses on a street gang that has to battle aliens while their gang leader becomes President of the United States, because that’s a movie I want to see.

Greg Russo will handle the Saints Row script. Russo has credits on two other video game related scripts: the Mortal Kombat reboot, and the Resident Evil reboot. He’s also currently writing Netflix’s Death Note 2, and an adaptation of the DC comic The Highwaymen.

The thing giving me pause here is Gray. He’s by no means a bad director., but he’s a bit workman-like, and I can’t imagine him making the movie very wild and crazy. Hopefully I’m wrong, and he lets his freak flag fly.

Gray’s Men In Black: International opens June 14, 2019.