Sega’s ‘Rent A Hero’ game being adapted into a movie; wonderful, confusing
Sega’a Rent A Hero is being adapted into a movie. Are you familiar with this property? No? How could you not know? Why, it’s a title from Sega’s Japanese Mega Drive that dropped in 1991! A natural selection for a movie!
Sega’s movie and television production company is developing a film based on the game maker’s relatively obscure action-RPG Rent A Hero, Stories International announced today. Hot Tub Time Machine director Steve Pink, who wrote Gross Pointe Blank and High Fidelity, is attached to co-write the film with scribe Jeff Morris.
Produced by Yu Suzuki, Rent A Hero first debuted on Sega’s Japanese Mega Drive in 1991. The comedic action game stars Taro Yamada, who unwittingly becomes a hero for hire after ordering take out for a dinner party but is delivered super-powered combat armor instead. A remake, Rent A Hero No. 1, was released for Dreamcast and Xbox, but only in Japan.
Stories International’s description of Rent A Hero, the movie, might help explain why this obscure Sega property is being adapted into a movie:
RENT A HERO tells the story of a reluctant slacker genius who joins a high-tech startup pitched as an “Uber for heroes,” aimed to improve people’s daily lives at an affordable price. But when company insiders plan to weaponize the tech, the slacker and his fellow Rent A Heroes must band together to stop them.
Rent A Hero is one of many properties Sega and Stories International are trying to bring to big and small screens. The company announced in 2014 that it was developing feature films, television shows and digital series based on franchises like Golden Axe, Altered Beast, Virtua Fighter and Crazy Taxi.
Stories International announced earlier this year that its movie based on Shinobi was being shepherded by Marc Platt (Into the Woods, Legally Blonde, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World).