The official trailer for the Jerry Bruckheimer's Prince of Persia movie is out, and there has been quite a bit of subsequent buzz, with lots of interviews going around and offering plenty of new information.

What follows is a round-up of interesting tidbits from various interviews with the game's creator, Jordan Mechner, and Bruckheimer, the movie's Producer.

Speaking with Latino Review (via Kotaku), Mechner talks about the difference between providing a story for a game, and one for a movie:

The movie is mostly based on 'The Sands of Time' which is the 2003 game that UBI Soft Montreal. Rather than try to do a literal retelling of the game, what I pitched to Jerry and Disney in 2004 and I think what movie very much is, is characters and elements, some of the coolest elements from the game sort of reconfigured into a story that makes a good movie. That's pretty much what we set out to do from the beginning.

...

There are no sand monsters in the movie. For the game, turning everyone in the world except for the two main characters into sand monsters was really useful because it created an inexhaustible supply of enemies for you as a player to fight. But that's a story that's meant to be played a controller in your hand and the movie is an experience that's meant to be a sort of ride to go on, shared by an audience. So we didn't want to make a movie about fighting monsters.

Bruckheimer later explains why he decided to take on such a project, when video game movies traditionally do not do very well. And in the process, he reveals that Prince of Persia has scored high with test audiences, even moreso than Pirates of the Caribbean:

I think the fact that it was so different from anything in the marketplace. If you look at all the 'Spider-Mans' and all the stuff that's coming out, 'Iron Man' and all these 'Transformers' this is just so unique and so fresh and different. I just love the character that Jordan had created. So it takes you back to a whole ancient period, and the movie, when you see it, it's like an old fashioned, romantic adventure film. That's really what it is. It's like a 'Lawrence of Arabia' with this kind of supernatural element added to it. But it's really a wonderful, biblical story about jealousy and goes back to all the primal fears and conflicts that we have through history. So it embellishes a lot of interesting things. What we found when we tested the movie a few weeks ago, and it tested extraordinarily high which surprised me because I always think these things are going to fail but this one turned out great; the women were a surprise because I thought we made a terrific movie for the boys because the girl is beautiful but the women flipped over this film. I've never had a score where the parents, there is violence, too, because it's PG-13, but the parents rated the film a hundred percent with an excellent or very good which has never happened before. So it's one of these movies that we know they'll take their children to go see it which is a huge advantage for a film, that parents can say, 'Hey, it's cool. My kid can see it.'

Not even 'Pirates' tested like that?

We were right up there with 'Pirates', and in fact the number was a little higher. It's not 'Pirates' but 'Pirates' wasn't 'Pirates' either when we tested it. So you never know what you have. You don't know. I've had films test and then nobody showed up. We did a movie called 'Glory Road' which we had an enormous testing on and we couldn't get people to go see it. It was a tricky film. Nobody showed up and that happens.

On the subject of the "movie game" stigma, Jordan Mechner was asked if he thought they had escaped it with this film in an interview with Nintendo World Report (via GoNintendo):

You mean the fact that there hasn't really been a good movie based on a video game? I think Prince of Persia is a movie that can stand on its own even if there wasn't a video game. To me, as a movie-goer, the problem with video game movies is that the first thing that's lost in translation is the gameplay, which so often is the thing about the game that made it successful in the first place. It's kind of ironic that that's the element that doesn't come across. I think the reason that Prince of Persia can work as an action-adventure movie is not because of the gameplay. It's because, first of all, it's set in the universe of One Thousand and One Nights, which is this really rich and cinematic world. That's always been fascinating to filmmakers, and it's been a long time since that world has been brought to the screen, and certainly never in this epic scale that's possible with today's technology and visual effects. That's one reason. Another is that the kind of action in the games—the parkour, the sword fighting, the swashbuckling kind of hero that the Prince of Persia has always been—is something that also lends itself well to cinema. And finally, the character of the prince is a recognizable, likeable, sympathetic human being. So I think the movie has all those things going for it.

Should we show the trailer again? (Shows the trailer)

I was thinking about that question you asked before, about similarities between the game and movie. There are no sand monsters in the movie. Part of the reason the sand monsters worked great in the game is because they were an inexhaustible supply of enemies for the player to fight, and also it tied into the gameplay mechanic of the dagger of time, as a way to keep the dagger filled with sand. I didn't want to write a movie about fighting monsters.

Naturally, with Disney backing the thing, one would expect merchandising to play a big part. Here is the exchange which covered that aspect of the film:

Q: Seeing as how this is a feature bankrolled by Disney and Bruckheimer, are we going to see a big merchandising blitz for it? Will we be seeing Prince of Persia book bags and action figures and collectibles and all this other awesome stuff?

JM: There will be action figures, designed by Todd MacFarlane, actually. There will be LEGOs. To me in some ways that's even more cosmic than there being a movie.

Q: There's the next question: LEGO Prince of Persia? (laughter)

JM: That's another turning the sands of time forward question. (laughter) There will also be a graphic novel prequel to the movie. But we'll save that for another day. That's a project that I'm involved in that I'm excited about.

And finally, (via GoNintendo) got in on the action as well, getting to speak with both Mechner and Bruckheimer. Asked about a recently-filed trademark for "Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sand" under his name, Mechner responded, "I am not sure. When you say I filed a trademark, that doesn't necessarily mean that I know I filed a trademark."

Joystiq presses further, asking if it could be film related or have something to do with some sort of tie-in product:

Yeah. There is a bunch of stuff. There is a graphic novel. And with regard to games, Ubisoft Montreal, the team that I worked with on Sands of Time, is developing something new. I am not the guy that is going to make that announcement, but there is other Prince of Persia stuff in the works.

Asked if the film sets up a sequel, the duo reply:

Bruckheimer: No. I don't think ...

Mechner: I don't either.

Bruckheimer: There was nothing in Pirates that we ever thought signaled there was going to be another movie. But I think we will do the same thing if the public embraces us; we will take what is in this movie and embellish it into something else.

Mechner: I didn't set up the first Prince of Persia game for a sequel either.

Bruckheimer: You just don't know. But if you have smart people working with you, and fortunately we do, they figure out what they can take, like they did on Pirates. Ted and Terry, Elliott and Ross took the ideas in that first movie and created three films, and now we are doing a fourth with them. So that happens.

About a new game or some sort of video game tie-in with the movie, Mechner notes "All I can say is there are going to be some cool announcements coming out of Ubisoft in the next few months, but this isn't the occasion for me to make them."

And finally, fans of the games love to see things they recognize in the movies, but oftentimes, it feels like the movies fail to deliver. Bruckheimer was asked what mattered more to him, to produce an entertaining movie or a faithful adaptation:

I think you have to do both. I think you have really got to entertain an audience. That is the key. Otherwise, you will be unhappy and the gamers will be unhappy. Because if they come see it, they are not entertained, but they see all the cool gameplay in it, they will walk out saying, "Eh, it was all right." So I think you have got to give them exactly what Jordan said: Give them a great story, great characters, and have recalls to the game. And that is what we have. We have a lot of recalls. So when you see the movie, you will say, "Oh, yeah! I remember that. That is cool. They took that ..." So you will see a lot of the game stuff that is in the movie.

All three interviews are loaded with more information, though some of it does overlap. If you've read this far, then be sure to check it out when you have the chance.