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Shadow Of The Colossus, Adam Sandler, And Game Informer...It Happened
In the fall of 2005, Game Informer's editor-in-chief, Andy McNamara, entered my office and told me that he had been contacted by a movie company that wanted us to create a special Game Informer cover for use in an upcoming Adam Sandler film called Reign Over Me. He said it was a serious-toned Sandler movie that followed a character who lost his family on 9/11 and was trying to rebuild his life. He then said that the movie company requested Shadow of the Colossus to be the game featured on the magazine cover.
I remember giving Andy a blank stare in response. I couldn't wrap my brain around Sandler, 9/11, and Shadow of the Colossus in the same film. Andy walked me through more of the plot, which utilized Shadow of the Colossus as a bonding tool for Sandler's character and a friend he had lost touch with, and I thought it sounded like a great thing to be a part of. Andy agreed.
An added bonus to this project: We got the chance to create a cover for Shadow of the Colossus, something we hadn't done in the past. To this day, this is still one of my favorite covers. The sad part: Only a few people have it in their collections.
We decided to give it a unique number. We settled on 150.5, since it was created after we finished issue 150. Shadow of the Colossus was also reviewed in issue 150. The actual cover for the issue was the first look of Crackdown.
We sent the cover file to our printer and asked them to recycle pages from previous issues to complete the issue. What was inside the magazine didn't matter. The finished prop featured a random assortment of 146 pages. In a few of the magazines these pages were printed upside down. The cover stock is considerably thicker than Game Informer's standard. No ad was printed on the backside of the cover. The back of the magazine features an add for the PlayStation 2 version of Resident Evil 4. We only printed 50 copies of this issue. Half of them were sent to Happy Madison Productions. The rest went to Game Informer's office.
Sadly, the magazine wasn't prominently displayed in the film, but some of us think it's on the chair in the background. Others believe it is under the stack of games on the coffee table.
Don Cheadle's character loved Shadow of the Colossus. We felt the same way about our fake cover.
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