PoP Original Screenplay

Regarding Prince of Persia’s recent journey from video game to movie, I’m sometimes asked how closely the final film follows my original story.

Now that the movie is out on DVD/Blu-Ray, I figure the easy way to satisfy curiosity is to simply post my screenplay from June 2005.

Quick history: This was the last draft I wrote, starting from the story John August and I pitched to Disney/Bruckheimer in 2004. A series of other writers took it from there: Jeff Nachmanoff, Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro & Carlo Bernard, in that order, resulting in the shooting script that went into production in summer 2008.

The making of the movie is well documented in Michael Singer’s coffee-table-worthy book and the movie DVD/Blu-Ray extras. Now, you can see how it started.

Update: If you’re curious about the game-into-movie adaptation process, I’ve also posted the original game script of Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, which I wrote in 2002-03, and an accompanying article about how that game story was developed. As these materials illustrate, writing for games and movies are two very different crafts.

Posted on Oct 11, 2010 in Blog, Featured, Film, Games, Prince of Persia | 14 comments

14 Comments

  1. 10-11-2010
    Brackynews says:

    Delightful, some Thanksgiving day reading after supper. Thank you Mr. Mechner.

    Reply
  2. 10-11-2010
    Akiii says:

    great…….Thanks Mr. Mechner….!!!

    Reply
  3. 10-11-2010
    Super David says:

    I recently found a script for the movie, that I read was leaked sometime before the movie’s release. It says “Revisions by
    Jeffrey Nachmanoff, June 15, 2006
    Jerry Bruckheimer Films” (so it’s not as special as what you posted).
    Anyways, thanks for posting the script, Mr. Mechner.

    Reply
  4. 10-11-2010
    Stefano says:

    Thanks for share it!

    Reply
  5. 10-11-2010
    Amit Sachan says:

    Thanks u sir for sharing ..

    Reply
  6. 10-13-2010
    reachrishikh says:

    Hey Jordan,
    I’ve been searching for those fonts for a long time. Is there any way they can be available to download?
    Both the font with which you’ve written ‘Prince of Persia’ on the title page (which I’m sure is proprietary, but I’m only looking to use it in my capacity as a fan, not for anything commercial), and the one which you’ve used to write ‘Sands of Time’ right below it (which I guess is not a proprietary font but have been unable to locate it anywhere).

    Reply
  7. 10-14-2010
    Yunir says:

    a lot of thanks, mstr Jordan. a wanna ask, deoes your book POP-SOT exists only in english language? cause of i’m from russia, i dont know english wery well….

    Reply
  8. 10-14-2010
    Dustin says:

    I read through half the script and was thoroughly entertained. I haven’t seen the movie yet (the disc from Netflix is sitting by my TV at home right now)…I hope they didn’t change much, this script seemed great to me!

    Reply
  9. 10-15-2010
    Meg says:

    This was an incredibly cool read, thank you for sharing!

    I have always loved the stories and the characters from POP. This version has a lot of what the movie lost for me. Dastan doesn’t start off as noble so you see more of his progression from having the world handed to him on a platter to fighting for something because it’s… right. He also retains more of his wisecracking charisma from the games. Tamina is a much stronger character and not just portrayed as mildly intelligent arm candy. There’s more substance behind her, she can kick some serious ass, and it makes more sense for her to be a guardian of the dagger.

    Needless to say, I still enjoyed the final movie and am hoping for a sequel. I would love to see the direction a sequel would take and if it would follow along the lines of the games and deal with the consequences of releasing the sands of time.

    I think it’s a great script and thank you for the world you created, it’s a fantastic place.

    Reply
  10. 10-17-2010
    Daniel says:

    Jordan, please don’t be mad about what I’m going to say, but…

    You claim that the reason for the change of story from the game was that the plot of the game was too poor and not suitable for a movie.
    But one of the main problems I had with the film was that the plot was *Not* as good as the game’s plot, in fact, there were almost no plot to it.

    You should have stick to the game’s plot on this one :-/

    Oh, and there was no problem to not give the prince a name. I don’t understand why you make the decision to give him a name in the film. “The Prince” is a much cooler nickname than “Dastan” :-/

    Reply
  11. 10-17-2010
    Saskia says:

    Thank you for sharing this, I really enjoyed reading it. I prefer this version to the revised one, but the cliffhanger is far more merciless – I’m half glad it wasn’t adopted in the movie! :)

    Reply
  12. 10-18-2010
    Angela says:

    Hi Jordan,

    thanks for posting your original script. Looking forward to reading it.

    Reply
  13. 5-5-2011
    Lenor says:

    10 times better than the movie, still 2 times worse than the game!

    Reply
  14. 9-7-2011
    Moncler says:

    Thanks u sir for sharing ..

    Reply

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