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Video Games Adaptations – Feature
This is still an emerging market for Hollywood, and not surprising really. Back in the late 80’s and 90’s video games in the majority had little or no substance for anyone to really base a film from. With the advent of digital media in the 90’s however things started to change and content and space for video game developers was no longer the big issue it previously was. Now pre recorded musical scores and full motion video could easily be included in games. This however didn’t really help make the games any better to play, it did however allow developers to be more cinematic in their approach of games.
Previously only the really big hits would get made into movies, games like Double Dragon, Street Fighter and Pokemon, but now games are widely more popular and things are changing. Games are getting bought up to be made as movies left right and center. Budgets for game studios are now massive and they employ large teams, in fact the games are almost somewhat required nowadays to have at least a basic story, even simple games like Super Monkey Ball have stories, and they don’t really need them. With massive games like Halo and the like, creating universes and characters that have massive followings, the movie industry is rapidly wising up to a new set of pre existing fans that should give a certain safety net to making video game to movie adaptations as oppose to original movies.
Whether this is a good thing for movies in general is still up out there, there are pro’s and con’s on both sides and it’s a discussion that is when all is considered it’s rather fruitless. You will always get a fairly diverse spectrum of movies from the main picture companies and the indie studies. The real forbearer and predictor of where video game to movie adaptations are going can already be seen in the comic book to movie adaptations, this is a very similar model and you can already see the same trends emerging. With us now getting some very solid comic book movies with highly talented directors you could expect the same to happen with the video game market, these movies will eventually draw some talented filmmakers onboard who understand how these movies should be made and its then we will really see good uses made of the licenses.
For the next part in the series we are going to be looking at what has gone before in the video game to movie adaptation market and also what is coming up in the future.