In Hollywood, pandering to the ‘geek’ market has always seemed to be a familiar mode of operation.
When Hollywood got stumped and struggled to think up of creative intellectual properties to entertain us all, they turned to a geek staple – comic books.
While not all of them struck a chord, many turned out to be tent pole blockbusters that audiences ate up.
Captain America, the X-Men series, The Dark Knight – they all brought in big paydays for many.
And it sure beats the crappy popcorn movies Hollywood is coming up with by itself.
Johnny English 3? Abduction? Jack and Jill? Something’s got to give.
But as the comic well seems to be running dry, Hollywood’s got their eyes on another set of so called geeks – the video gamers.
After the recent release of the game Modern Warfare 3, it made $775 million in its first five days – more than any other medium of entertainment has made in that time.
To put that in perspective, the highest grossing film after five days is The Dark Knight making $203 million.
Fact is, video games are big business, reportedly being a $66 billion industry last year, so it’s not surprising that Hollywood is looking to grab its own share of milk from that cash cow.
But more importantly, it’s still very much a growing creative industry, and unlike a lot of movies we see nowadays, video game IPs are both original and creative.
While blockbuster films today heavily buys franchises from other forms of media, innovation still thrives in video game design.
The technology in our current generation of gaming consoles has significantly changeed video games. It’s not all about mechanics. It involves fresh new visions for characters and story telling that could just as easily rival anything we see in cinema.
It has become an art form in its own right.
Plans are currently in the work for film adaptations of two of video game’s biggest blockbuster franchises – Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, and Bioware’s Mass Effect.
For the uninitiated, Assasin’s Creed is a historical sci-fi action-thriller. Think historical epic meets the Matrix, with assassins and parkour thrown in.
Mass Effect meanwhile, is a sci-fi action with an extremely fleshed out world that has lead to numerous comparisons as this generation’s Star Wars or Star Trek.
Both of these franchises have a level depth, characterization and spectacle that would no doubt translate well to the big screen – if done right.
But if history has told us anything, Hollywood doesn’t exactly know how to deal with video game adaptations. Just take a look at the Van Damme and Kylie catastrophe that was the Street Fighter movie – touted by some as one of the worst movies ever made.
More recently there was Prince of Persia – another Ubisoft game adaptation that a good actor like Jake Gyllenhaal couldn’t even save.
Hitman, Super Mario Brothers, Max Payne – the list of failed video game film adaptations goes on.
To buck the trend, the creative minds behind both franchises are keeping their respective film companies on a shorter leash to make sure the films properly do justice to the games’ original creative visions.
Ubisoft is retaining more creative control on the adaptation of Assasin’s Creed by helming the film under their own recently created film division Ubisoft Motion Pictures.
Meanwhile, Mass Effect is keeping an eye creatively by having Bioware’s co-founders as the film’s executive producers.
Video gamers are strong advocates of ‘fanboyism’, and keeping them satisfied that these films will capture the essence of what make these franchises so enthralling will help avoid the kind of backlash that has stalled the production of another game to movie adaptation, Sony’s Unchartered.
The message is clear – don’t dumb down these great franchises by giving them the typical Hollywood treatment.
We want story. We want character. We want depth.
That’s why many grew to love these franchises in the first place.
Hollywood has already tarnished my childhood with sorry offerings of great franchises. I’d hate to see them disappoint again.
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