Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now game will ask you to get out of the boat

Francis Ford Coppola, the acclaimed director of numerous films like Peggy Sue Got Married and Jack, is helping to create a videogame based on Apocalypse Now. It’s being directed by Montgomery Markland, executive produced by Lawrence Liberty and written by Rob Auten. According to the godfather of The Godfather, the game will be a “psychedelic horror RPG” that puts players into the shoes of Captain Willard on his quest for Colonel Kurtz.

“I dove into the Vietnam War without a parachute. And today I’ve been joined by new daredevils; a team who want to make an interactive version of mine and John Milius’ story that puts you in the middle of the war.”

Fans of 2012’s Spec Ops: The Line can see the obvious potential with adapting Apocalypse Now and its wartime existential horror into a videogame, but according to the report in Glixel, the developers want to downplay the combat aspects and have players think more about the choices Captain Willard had to make in the story.

“In the film when the chief character is killed by a spear and he tries to puncture Willard with the spear that’s sticking through his chest you know that there’s just some kind of visceral hatred and fear. We’re giving players the ability to alter their own versions of the story, what if you didn’t kill the person with the dog? What if you didn’t trade the fuel for time with the Playboy bunnies? All these decisions that are made in the film. The ability to take a really fraught and intense environment, character-centric choices and bring these two things together, that’s the plan.”

American Zoetrope is asking for $900,000 on their Kickstarter for the project.