Is the story of the Prince of Persia movie purely based on the titular video game?

Question

I heard that Prince of Persia: The sands of time movie was based on the Prince of Persia: The sands of time video game. However in the wiki article it is said:

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is a film loosely based on the game.

I also found that the writers of the movie are Jordan Mechner, Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro. I am not aware of the story of the game. So is the story of the film not the same as that of the game? Also I could not see any attribute in the film to the game. So did the producers not buy the story legally from Ubisoft? What is the back story?

Answer 1

As I commented, the story of the film only loosely has ideas from the game like the setting and some characters.

Judging solely from my experience playing the game and the summary from Wikipedia, there are many more differences than I realized.

To start, the prince is nameless in the game, and he is an actual prince, not an orphan brought into the king's court, nor does he have any siblings at all, nor does he have a princess selected out. In fact, the girl you meet in the game is but a lowly citizen that you meet during the adventure who in turn, helps you to complete the game.

The reason his father dies in the game is because, after raiding a city, they loot the Sands of Time containing the Dagger of Time. The kingdom is then betrayed by the Vizier. He tricks the prince into releasing the sands, killing almost everyone around the kingdom by turning them into fearsome sand beasts, including your father. The entire plot of the game revolves around collecting enough of the Sands of Time in order for the Prince to revert time back to the moment he released them, and to stop this action in order to save his kingdom.

Instead, the movie focuses on more of a plot of deception from within the kingdom. Dastan, who is essentially the Prince, is being betrayed by his Uncle Nizam for the throne. Nizam realizes that he can use the dagger to prevent the Prince from being the king of Persia.

Answer 2

As an addition to Tyler's answer, while the story, the locations, the characters and their particular relationships are different from the game, there are still many general similarities in the story development of both the movie and the video game, apart from the obvious presence of the "Sand of Time", the dagger and the "Prince of Persia" himself:

Similar to the movie the Vezier (though not being related to the Prince's family) more or less persuades the Prince's father to conquer a realm for more or less normal reasons (game: wealth and honor, movie: preemptive attack) just to secretly get his hands on the Sand of Time. The Prince in turn tries to impress his father, and steals the Dagger of Time during this attack (not knowing what it can do), much to the dismay of the Vezier's evil plans.

On his way to correct things (though in the game everybody is dead/evil and in the movie he is merely banned/wanted for betrayal), he meets a girl who in the end knows much more about the Sand and the Dagger. She wants to get her hands on it in order to correct things, while the Prince is rather stubborn, doesn't trust her and wants to do things his own way by keeping the dagger getting both into conflict.

At the end, they manage to find the source of the Sand of Time, and by reuniting it with the Dagger, turn back the time to the start of the adventure. The Prince gets the chance to prevent all those evil things happening, and just hints at the girl (who has no memory of her adventure in the other timeline) as to what actually happened.

So while the story is quite different, major plot elements along with the general personalities and relationships of the major characters are not that dissimilar between the movie and the game.

Answer 3

Yes. The 2010 movie Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was based on the 2003 video game of the same name.

From Wikipedia:

In March 2004, the production company Jerry Bruckheimer Films sought to acquire feature film rights to the 2003 video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time with the film to be distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. Under John August as executive producer, the series' creator Jordan Mechner was hired to write the script. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's Pirates of the Caribbean film trilogy served as a touchstone in how a theme park ride was converted into a film franchise. According to Mechner, "Rather than do a straight beat-for-beat adaptation of the new videogame, we're taking some cool elements from the game and using them to craft a new story." Mechner previously considered producing an animated film based on the games, but could not resist Disney and Bruckheimer's offer. In February 2006, Disney hired screenwriter Jeffrey Nachmanoff to write a new script for Prince of Persia.

So much so that Director Mike Newell had "an assistant playing the video games to brief him on key details."

While based on the game, the movie is not a straight adaptation.

Answer 4

As per your production rite question, the answer is yes they brought the rights , As per Wiki statement-

In March 2004, the production company Jerry Bruckheimer Films sought to acquire feature film rights to the 2003 video game Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time with the film to be distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.

And giving attribute to game depends on the agreement terms and condition. And I think their is no need to give attribute if you brought the full rights.

The movie is just loosely based on the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Elements from Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones are also incorporated in it.

Mechner, in writing the script, re-conceived the storyline to shift the perspective from the interactive one experienced by video gamers to the non-interactive experience by film audiences. The screenwriter left out elements of the Prince of Persia video games Warrior Within and The Two Thrones and did not anticipate including these elements in the film's possible sequels. (source)

Rather then explaining all the differences, we can only say that its story retelling by just taking some of characters but with different origin stories and little different situation. They removed the context of sand storm and monster and just made the movie full of more human rather the sand monsters. Other major differences are the death of king in different way, completely different princess story (princess is a prisoner in the game), Vezir's have no relation to king in the game, an extra character brother of prince and different love story too. In the game prince doesn't trust the princess because of the wrong treatment to her by his own kingdom and she earned the trust later in the game.