More Game To Movie Translations In Progress

Thanks to Yahoo/Hollywood Reporter for their article discussing the latest batch of videogame-to-movie adaptations in progress, which focuses on a completely different set of films to yesterday's article on Dungeon Siege. This time, Impact Pictures, who "which wrapped principal photography of its $40 million-range 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' sequel Friday in Toronto", is profiled, and they discuss forthcoming movies from the company, helmed by Mortal Kombat director Paul W.S. Anderson, including "a $50 million adaptation of Atari's best-selling 'Driver' game", and, weirdly, a "big-screen version of Tecmo's blockbuster 'Dead or Alive' fighting game... [which] will provide some PG-13 fighting action and humor, devised by screenwriter J.F. Lawton ('Pretty Woman')."

Comments

Movies?

[Etone]

Studios these days!

They were better off back in my day when games with flimsy stories were ported to shoddy Saturday morning cartoons, like they should be.

-e-

Just what the world needs!

[Galileo430]

Just what the world needs more of... Bad movies based on games with bad stories. Dead or Alive is my favorite example of a bad story. Anyone even know what the story is? I don't, I just know some lucky SOB got to program a boob bounce matrix!

Bloodrayne

[Kris_J]

I'm hoping that the Bloodrayne movie is decent:

http://www.gamecubenetwork.com/cube.news?3488

Re:Bloodrayne

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, I'm hoping it's indecent ...

Re:Bloodrayne

[Kris_J]

It can be two things.

wow

[pizza_milkshake]

i was almost positive that hollywood movies couldn't have any less content than they do already, but i was wrong!

Um yea

[quantax]

I failing to understand why they are picking these games for conversion. Dungeon Seige for 1.5 hours, what the hell? What about Morrowind or some other classic D&D quest with a real plot. But Dungeon Seige is good compared to Dead or Alive or Driver; DoA has zero plot to develop from, so I think we can expect another street fighter here. And as far as Driver, what the hell? Theres plenty of good car-chase movies without making one about a game about car-chases. Hollywood must be sadly misinformed or something, since I can think of plenty of video games which offer far more possibilities based on existing plots. Resident Evil atleast has a plot, though its not terribly original, its there and its something, so I can give them that, but DoA the movie sounds weak.

Re:Um yea

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

My guess would be that there are a couple of things at work here. First of all, say you're a movie producer and you own the rights to this somewhat poor script for generic movie Y. Now during the course of reading the script for Y, you notice that some scenes match a hit video game that has sold very well on a multitude of platforms. Well golly - let's slap that license on there and make some easy money! Now I don't know if more people are familiar with Dungeon Siege or Morrowind or Driver or DoA. My guess would be that the most people are familiar with DoA but I've got no numbers to back that up so feel free to disagree and correct me. Second of all, I'd guess that an already established plot like Morrowind apparently has is dangerous territory because, if you mess with that established universe, you're going to piss off some of the core of your target a lot. Who knows how those kooks out in Hollywood think though...

Re:Um yea

[The Munger]

Alright, bear with me. GTA: The Movie. You've got to admit, it's got a bit of story and background. I'd love to see Bruce Campbell playing Tommy Vercetti as a comedic gangster (So he's not Italian - I don't care). I could see him slip right into the role.

Then again, why not use the voice of Vice City, Ray Liotta. I can't quite see him doing the comedic aspect as well, but we'd all recognise his voice straight off and he has done the Mobster film before.

Re:Um yea

[Recoil_42]

yeah, lets call it scarface GTA3 game wouldnt be bad.... but Vice City has litereally hundreds of intentional similarities to scarface.

Re:Um yea

[The Munger]

Yes, that's because it parodies scarface amoungst other references. There have been movie parodies before. A movie parody topped the box office last week (Scary Movie 3). The point is that GTA has enough of its own story and background that you could make a movie.

Boy I can't wait...

[NanoGator]

...until Tetris comes out.

Re:Boy I can't wait...

[GregThePaladin]

I think Penny Arcade wrapped that one up: http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2003-01-24& res=l

Re:Boy I can't wait...

[JFMulder]

Somebody must not like Penny-Arcade. I posted the same link as you, and I got modded one time troll and one time funny, and you got modded troll to 0. Hillarious strip. Every once in a while I put it as my wallpaper.

Oh boy

[NanoGator]

I just finished watching Hulk like half an hour ago. You can probably imagine, I didn't find this artice exciting.

My main problem with video game/comicbook/cartoon adaptions is that live-action movies are not the right medium for it. Video games and cartoons are very single-dimensional when it comes to personality. How do you adapt human depth to a character without destroying it? Spiderman comes to mind. Remember the villain in that movie? Who can imagine a guy really turning into that?

What's the solution? I wish they'd think about what this medium is strong at and focus on its strengths. Live action is great for human interaction, it stucks as a superhero medium. Wanna use live action? Okay, at least be kind enough to make the experience worthwhile. X-Men comes to mind. Don't want your movie to be like that? Okay, at LEAST consider an animated film. You have an enitrely different range of advantages with animation.

I really wish movies were made to be entertained instead of to draw money.

Re:Oh boy

[sahala]

Video games and cartoons are very single-dimensional when it comes to personality.

And movies have had no track record of having single-dimensional characters? What about books? They're a much more limited medium than comic-books or video games but Charles Dickens (unfortunately) didn't seem to have a problem building ridiculously complex characters. Strong and complete human characters can be developed independent of medium. Many (not all) video games ignore personality development to focus on gameplay and spectacle. There are more than a few comic books with characters that most of us can totally imagine meeting in person.

I think what you're trying to tell us is that they shouldn't convert comicbooks/videogames with limited personalities to the live-action screen because gaps in personality become more obvious. So if they want to do an adaptation, they should pick an appropriate game/comic-book to adapt from. Now, I can totally understand how there are licensing issues and other business obstacles that we are not privy to. Also, I can imagine some screenwriters adapting a game/book with incomplete plot and character development just because there are plenty of gaps to add new material.

I really wish movies were made to be entertained instead of to draw money.

Is this a Soviet Russia joke?

Obligatory Penny-Arcade link

[JFMulder]

Penny-Arcade already gave a thought to it. :)

Re:Obligatory Penny-Arcade link

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll? Wtf? Man, I gotta get me some of that moderator crack.

Re:Obligatory Penny-Arcade link

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right, it really should be "-1 Overated" because PA is an over rated piece of crap.

/. images...

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone else not getting the slash images? (of course the ads still work...)

Re:/. images...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I have been for awhile on and off now. Must not be a widespread problem because it looks like no one else is complaining. It looks like it might be a DNS problem of some type.

Can't Wait for This One

[jazman_777]

Star Wars Galaxies!

Wait, what?

[MMaestro]

'After narrowly surviving the lab incident in Raccoon Forest, Alice wakes up in the middle of Raccoon City, a city of the dead, now she must escape before Umbrellas newest creation, Nemesis, finds her.. '

Could we at least get the continuity correct? Resident Evil 1 (both the game and the movie) took place in/under a mansion. It had nothing to do with any forestlike areas (unless you consider the greenhouse area to be the Everglades). I know Hollywood likes to butcher video games during their transition to the silver screen, but is it too much to ask for correct plot summaries?

Re:Wait, what?

[UserChrisCanter4]

Direct Translations of the plot don't always work as well as a slightly reworked version. Remember, there's only 1.5-2 hours to develop the story, not 10-15.

That said, I feel compelled to point out that the mansion was in the forest. If you watch the god-awful intro video on the original PSX copy of RE (The gamecube version removed it, as did one of the classics or director's cut editions), you'll see the Stars team helicoptering in and then running through the forest to the mansion as they try to escape the zombie dogs.

Re:Wait, what?

[scot4875]

Umm, no, the Gamecube version still has an intro video. And if my memory serves me correctly, it starts out with a news report, then the Stars team helicoptering in and then running through the forest to the mansion as they try to escape the zombie dogs. It just looks a lot better this time around.

--Jeremy

Re:Wait, what?

[UserChrisCanter4]

wow, a late response here.

I was referring to the live-action intro movie in the original PSX version (the big box edition, before PSX games shipped in jewel cases). They cast actors who looked vaguely like the game characters. It ended with this terrible, UPN action show style intro where the live actors were shown doing some sort of vaguely cop thing for three seconds(loading gun, adjusting armor, etc.) while the narrator called their name out one by one (Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine). All of this was shown over a flaming background. It truly was so terrible that it deserved to have been kept. Maybe it's in there as a bonus feature or something, but I never ran across it.

Regardless of intro movie format, the fact stands that the mansion was out in the forest.

You have too much money when...

[FFFish]

...you throw it away on producing a movie based on a video game.

HOW!!!???

[illumina us]

How do you get a decent plot from any of these games? Not to mention why let horrible writers write the screenplay? The only game I could muster being a good movie is FFVII but that's because it almost played like a film.

Re:HOW!!!???

[imperator_mundi]

If at Square they did an outstanding job writing the history of FFVII, why the hell they did "The spirit within" with such an awful screenplay?

I think that the point is that histories for games are written from people who feel free to try daring solution, because the key of the succes of a game is to find a core of people who really, really, really love to play it (otherwise they wouldn't spend tens of hours and bucks on it); screenplays have on the contrary the main goal to be pleasant to the masses, so when translating a videogame in to a movie there's this tendency to smooth all the sharpen edges that eventually characterise the game... consequently the atmosphere of the story will be dramatically altered... as far as I remember they tried to do a Supermario movie... a decade after I still trying to wash it from my brain ;)

STOP MODDING ALL MY POSTS DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate it when they do that

Driver: Already been done.

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

a $50 million adaptation of Atari's best-selling 'Driver' game

What? I was fairly convinced that the game was based on the 1978 flick, The Driver. I mean come on, they're both based on a driver-for-hire, they have the same name, and they both sacrifice plot and voice acting in the name of ridiculous car chase scenes.

All of you should go out and rent this movie..

Now.

Fucking Paul Anderson

[sideshow]

Check out his "extensive" filmography. What know the worse of it? George "Night of the Living Dead" Romero was origianlly signed up to write and direct the Resident Evil movie. He even wrote a script. Then some genius at Capcom says, "When has Romero made a movie out of a video game? This Anderson guy made the movie Mortal Kombat so he must be the man for the job!"

I fucking hate Hollywood.

Re:Fucking Paul Anderson

[darkmayo]

after reading the Romero script I am glad they didn't use it. They already have the story of Chris and Jill in the mansion.. it was the video game.. there was no need to redo that story.

While the actual resident evil movie could have been much better.. at least it didn't retell the first story.

Wasn't there a forest next to the mansion?

[Chuck Chunder]

I've only seen the movie (which was pretty bad, Milla perving factor notwithstanding) but weren't there some scenes out in/near a forest. Either her flashbacks or something else?

Re:Wasn't there a forest next to the mansion?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a flashback. There was some vague hinting about spying or something like that.

Not only that. With DoA

[Ayanami Rei]

The only thing they have going for it is T&A, esp. the shaking ones during intense fights. This concept works as a game because there aren't real actresses playing the parts.

No actress that is of the "caliber" to be a DoA stand-in would subject herself to that level of fan-service. All three Charlie's Angels would have to go under the knife first.
It could only be a good film if it WASN'T rated PG13 and actually was violent or pornographic.

Sadly, it will be neither of things, nor can it be tongue-in-cheek unless they really scrape the bottom of the talent barrel, which no one wants to see.

Unless a firm and mildly interesting plot manifests itself. Even then, what's the point... why call it DoA? Reminds me of that "Pirates of the Carribean" game disaster. Just drop the name, save a little money, if you aren't going to "do it right".

Re:Not only that. With DoA

[Dinny]

I was going to bitch about everyone discounting the coolness of DoA. But I realized that you are correct. Making it a PG13 movie would be a complete waste of time. I'm with you, anything but an R rated DoA movie is just going to be a riduculus farce targeted only at 12 year olds.

EA=teh film industry

[luekj]

So we all wanted really good films based on video games...but now they're just making more crap + using broad concepts/plot ideas from the games.

Meh, lets see Super Mario Brothers 2: Time Travelin' Koopas all-ready.

vise versa

[asjk]

I was watching The Ring and thinking what a how well scripted it is for a videogame. You would think since that movie stories are generally better written that this progression would make more sense.

Full Circle

[t0ny]

This is highly amusing. Games based on genre films being made into genre films...

I guess it just confirms that Hollywood has, indeed, run out of ideas. Or maybe its just that the most creative medium right now is video games (which I personally think).

Nintendo classics

[Munk]

Why can't they pick anything good to make into a movie? How about Legend of Zelda. or Metroid. Maybe some love for Castlevania. Just some thoughts...

This is not a new concept!!!

[Mr.Fork]

Why did simoniker think that this is a new concept? It's not. Game makers and movie companies have been doing this for years.

As long as they don't take the Matrix route, using a game to bridge a movie, then I'm fine with it. (BTW - the Matrix game sucks bad. Real bad).

I enjoy the fact that games sometimes spawn movies or that are spawned AFTER movies (i.e. Star Wars series) but not as a link between movies.

Re:This is not a new concept!!!

[spitzig]

Was the Matrix game set between movies 2 & 3? Did they do that because they knew that some Matrix fans would want their "Matrix fix" between movies, and could make ~$50 by giving it to them? Or was the game an ad for the next movie--to get gamers excited about the third movie coming out?

I wonder what factor the price of a movie (~$10) in comparison to the cost of game ($50) has on business models. Also, the cost of producing a movie compared to a game. On the other hand, a popular movie clearly brings in more money than a popular game, due to the wider audience. I would think the latter would have a bigger effect on business models.

why not

[dh003i]

Baldur's Gate? Might actually make for more of a plot. That aside...

The same guy who directed Mortal Kombat? Now you know the movie's going to suck!

You have an interesting definition of "zero"

[DeadScreenSky]

DoA has zero plot to develop from

Have you played any DOA fighter past #1?

You can argue the storyline isn't any good, but saying it has zero storyline is simply wrong (I personally think it needs to be presented a little more obviously, as Americans seem easily confused by it - a 'what has occurred before' intro for each game would really help). For example, the ongoing plot of Kasumi and her brother - she became a Runaway Shinobi in game 2 to seek out her lost brother who was brainwashed by DOATEC. These events resulted in her being marked for death in DOA3 (the hunt being led by the very same brother, with his original memory recovered at the end of DOA2, no less). How about Gen Fu's struggle to save his granddaughter? Or the family conflict between Bass and Tina? Ayane killing her 'possessed' foster father (Omega/Genra) in DOA3? That isall plot.

(Psss...the story game mode was a tipoff.)

The volleyball game even features a tiny bit of plot, though it is strictly a silly side-story. Even there the characters react to each other based on the plot (Ayane hating her half-sister Kasumi, etc.).

I agree with the rest of your points. But maybe you should first play all of the games you are writing about next time.