The puzzle-solving game Myst, created by developers Cyan Worlds, has been optioned for a television show.
For decades, the movie industry has been trying to successfully cash-in on the popularity of video games, but to no avail.
Unlike comic books, video games don”t lend themselves to cinema with as much ease.
Nearly every movie based on a video game has underperformed in the box office. Too often they loosely follow the source material in order to be more appealing to the masses, which inevitably results in ridicule by critics and fans alike.
Take Hollywood Pictures” 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, which starred Dennis Hopper, John Leguizamo and Bob Hoskins. It had an estimated budget of $42 million, but only grossed a little less that $21 million.
Despite having well-known actors involved in the project, the movie was as critical failure.
Then in 1994 film adaptations of Street Fighter and Double Dragon were released, both grossing less than their budgets.
The only video game franchise that has translated somewhat well to film is the Resident Evil series, which saw its fifth installment in 2012. Unlike the film adaptations of the series competitor Silent Hill, which saw a second installment release in theaters in 2012.
The interactivity of video games is at the crux of their film adaptations failures and is the key problem in crossing mediums. The same way that the passiveness of viewing movies creates an obstacle, for the most part, when adapting them into video games.
But the film companies keep trying, going so far as to adapt board games into movies, such as 2012”s Battleship.
A film based on the game Tetris was announced earlier this month, with the production company that adapted the popular fighting game Mortal Kombat into a pair of movies in the ”90s.
What needs to be done to create a good, solid video game movie is to quit with blatant money grabs such as this. The reason the Resident Evil series has made it so far in the film industry is because of the popularity of zombies — it”s as simple as that.
Then again, video game movies may be a pointless endeavor, considering the leaps and bounds that the video game industry has taken over the past decade in story and narrative, not to mention the detail of graphics in both film and gaming.
Steven Spielberg announced earlier this year he will produce a television series based on Halo Series. Perhaps with having such a respected name in the industry behind the project, the series will prove a change of pace. But it is better to maintain low expectation, so as not to be let down.
