When Nadia Thorne first saw the email, she thought it was a prank or a student project. Did a Hollywood production company want to turn her video game into a movie?
Thorne is one of four developers behind Dredge, an independent game that combines quiet fishing with cosmic horror. Dredge received rave reviews when it was released in March 2023, but it wasn't the kind of high-profile film that generally drew audiences to movie theaters.
But the requests continued to come not from ignorant amateurs, but from the companies that produced blockbusters such as “Harry Potter'' and “Star Trek.'' A few months later, Thorne and his team signed a deal with Story Kitchen, a company founded by the producers of Sonic the Hedgehog, to produce a feature film based on Dredge.
“They seem to think it's going to go forward,” Thorne said. “It seems like all the major studios are excited.”
After a deluge of comic book movies, moviegoers are growing weary of superheroes. Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger announced in mid-May that the company would cut the number of Marvel movies and TV shows it releases a year to about two each. Meanwhile, Hollywood is turning to the video game industry as the next fertile ground for story ideas. Buoyed by hits such as “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” dozens of video game series have been optioned or produced for film or TV in the past two years, ranging from “God of War” to “Grounded.”
Many of these adaptations are still in development, but those that have been released have been successful. Amazon's recent “Fallout” series, based on the post-apocalyptic game, reached 65 million viewers, and the first two “Sonic the Hedgehog” films grossed more than $700 million The third film is scheduled to be released later this year. This goes both ways. Sarabond, president of his Xbox division at Microsoft, said at his Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday that the Fallout TV show is leading viewers to get into the game.
Hungry producers have gobbled up options for both blockbuster franchises and hit indie games like Dredge and the detective role-playing game Disco Elysium. Even little-known games have captivated Hollywood, such as the classic Sega action series Golden Ax and El Paso. Another is a low-budget shooter optioned by actor LaKeith Stanfield.
Even lesser-known video games are attractive to film and TV producers because they already have an established story, says David A. Gross, author of the movie newsletter Franchise Re. said.
“Hollywood looks for new stories wherever they can find them,” Gross said. “These games may not have as much (intellectual property) value, but they still have potential.”
Video game adaptations were once a laughing stock thanks to the creepy 1990s movies based on Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and Street Fighter. Recent films such as 2010's “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time'' and his 2016 “Warcraft'' have been commercially successful, thanks largely to overseas markets, but were critically panned. it was done. Jake Gyllenhaal, who starred in Prince of Persia, later expressed regret about the experience.
But that curse has been lifted in recent years thanks to popular titles such as Netflix's The Witcher, which is based on a series of Polish novels and video games, and filming for season four recently began. Last year, HBO's “The Last of Us” became the first video game adaptation to win numerous awards, earning him 24 Emmy nominations and winning eight.
“For years, poor results have supported the idea that video games cannot be successfully turned into audience-pleasing, profitable films. It will be released in August this year.
Recent hits have “proved that with the right creative, a new generation is more than ready to embrace those characters and worlds in a feature film,” Fogelson said.
High-end televisions, in particular, are fertile ground for video game adaptations because they allow for the kinds of side quests and exploration that make games so engaging. It might have been disastrous to cram The Last of Us' 15-hour story into a two-hour feature film, but HBO's nine-hour series gives it some breathing room and gives it a “long, long… Although it was an episode that had little to do with the overall story, it received rave reviews.
The historic failure of video game adaptations may have been due in large part to a lack of respect for the source material, but it's important to note that the filmmaking did not mock the games, but instead attracted a new generation of people who grew up with them. The situation has changed in recent years.
Todd Howard, director of multiple Fallout games and executive producer of the TV series, said in a recent interview that the show's production team “carefully translated every little thing” and that the set designers worked on the art. He said he even used a 3D printer to recreate it. From the game.
This valuation was one of the biggest considerations for Thorne and her colleagues when considering multiple offers to turn “Dredge” into a film or television series. They were impressed with Story Kitchen when one of their producer girlfriends identified a theme they were considering early in the development of “Dredge.”
“We're going to carry on our world, our story,” Thorne said, adding that he hopes to partner with a studio that “really gets it.”
With assistance from Thomas Buckley.
