PRINCE OF PERSIA’s journey to the big screen dates back many years, and when Jordan Mechner decided to pitch the game to Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer, he used the tool that he was most familiar with: the video game itself.

Mechner is best known for creating the first Prince of Persia game back in 1989 and has worked on a few games from the franchise throughout the years. The idea of using footage from the PS2’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (which Mechner wrote) is pretty brillian,t because I’m sure it saved them tons of money that they would’ve had to spend on creating a CG visualization of the trailer. The only drawback is that the game contains elements not present in the movie and vice versa. Still, that doesn’t stop the pitch trailer, which only took a week to put together, from being compelling.

Because the video game and his vision for the film were different, his main goal was to “to convey the kind of movie it would be” instead of telling the exact story that we’ll see in PRINCE OF PERSIA. Obviously the pitch was a success, because the film will be arriving in theaters next summer. You can read more from Jordan Mechner at his blog and you can check out the pitch trailer below.