Shinobi, the legendary SEGA ninja game, is being adapted for the big screen and now it has a director. Sam Hargrave, who directed the two Chris Hemsworth-led Extraction films, is coming onboard for Universal Pictures.
The 1987 game was set in modern times and featured ninja Joe Musashi setting out to stop the Zeed terrorist organization from kidnapping young students of his ninja clan. This all seems terribly familiar.
The games were notoriously tricky, but that didn’t put us off in the 1980s as ninjas were massive for Outposters of a certain age. Revenge Of The Ninja remains a stone-cold classic in our eyes. It also seemed to be something of a cutting-edge title in terms of graphics and music at the time. Shinobi also introduced several novelties to traditional platform mechanics, such as sophisticated enemy AI and multiple layers in each level.
The Shinobi franchise sold more than 4.60 million copies across thirteen games from the Commodore 64 to the PlayStation 2.
A comic book series based on the game, written by Alan McKenzie and illustrated by Jon Haward, was published in the UK publication Sonic the Comic between 1993 and 1995, with four stories printed during its run.
Ken Kobayashi will pen the script with Marc Platt and Adam Siegel producing.