Josh Gordon and Will Speck are working on a screenplay for a film adaptation of The Oregon Trail and have already secured the rights. The author duo, who recently implemented Marvel’s “Hit Monkey” series and whose current movie “Lyle – My Friend the Crocodile” is set to hit theaters soon, have popped out.
As a result, the gaming landmark duo aims to turn the gaming milestone into a black humorous musical, and two renowned songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (Oscar for “La La Land”) are already involved in the project. Due to the morbid nature of the template, with the poor characters tending to die suddenly from diarrhea or other inconveniences, they’d still consider aiming for an R rating or making it more family-friendly.
At the moment, however, there is no studio that has taken on the filming. So far, the Oregon Trail movie is still in the scripting stage. Then it must be successfully pitched to a studio, which must then be willing to spend enough money to implement it. However, due to the very popular and nostalgic brand in the US associated with the respected songwriters, the odds shouldn’t be too bad.
“The Oregon Trail” is probably not well known in this country, but in the US, the western adventure game, in which a group of settlers must be transported in 1848 on the eponymous 3,500 kilometer route from Missouri to Oregon, is well known. After all, the earliest version has been around since 1971 and has been used in various ports and remakes in schools to teach young people what a serious undertaking such a journey in 1848 really was.
The strategy game consists of getting enough food, clothes, spare parts for your car and other important items with limited financial resources to survive the adventure. However, during the journey there are always obstacles, you can buy supplies from settlements and if you don’t have enough money for a meal, it is possible to go hunting. In its earliest form, The Oregon Trail was a text-only adventure, which it doesn’t even call its title game deserved, as there was no video output, but ran through a teleprinter. So the gameplay was printed out on paper!
Developed in 1971 by an ambitious history teacher and his school math colleagues, The game went unused for years until the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC), an organization that promotes educational games for schools, added it to its collection in 1974 and then distributed it statewide. However, “The Oregon Trail” didn’t become popular nationwide until a graphically and playfully modernized version appeared on the Apple II computer in 1985. Many more variants and remakes followed over the decades. In 2016, The Oregon Trail was inducted into the Video Game Hall Of Fame.