Gears of War live-action film and 'adult animated series' coming to Netflix

Gears of War, the third-person shooter about bizarrely proportioned men and women wielding Volkswagen-sized machine guns with chainsaws attached to them in a never-ending war against a horde of mutant super-soldiers gone bad, is headed to Netflix.

The streaming service revealed on Twitter today that it has partnered with Gears of War developer The Coalition to develop "a live action feature film" as well as an "adult animated series" based on the games. And that may not be all: Netflix said there's "the potential for more stories to follow," presumably if these first two efforts are successful.

Gears feels like the sort of thing that could do quite well as a big, bombastic blockbuster on Netflix, perhaps directed (or at least executive produced) by Zack Snyder: Guns, muscles, explosions, inhuman enemies that can be slaughtered by the thousands with no feeling of guilt or remorse, a clear divide between the good guys and the bad guys, and maybe some superficial handwaving toward a greater message about the folly of hubris, not playing God, or, you know, whatever.

There's no sign of when any of this is going to show up on Netflix, but the next obvious step in the process is to begin the fan campaign to sign Dave Bautista to play Gears of War lead guy Marcus Fenix. It's a natural fit: Aside from the obvious physical similarity, Bautista has previously expressed interest in playing the character, and he actually appeared as himself (more or less) a few years ago in Gears 5.

Oh, the requests have already started.

The man they call The Animal hasn't yet commented on the Gears announcement, but original lead designer Cliff Blesinski had some thoughts about it:

We'll let you know when we have more info about Gears on Netflix, including when we've got some hint of a release date.