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

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...

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.

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:Bloodrayne

[Kris_J]

It can be two things.

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 ;)