Game-Based Movies - Will They Improve?

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A recent announcement by 3D Realms could see some of the best movies and TV shows based on games coming to screens in the near future.

Are you tired of seeing your favorite video games butchered on the big screen? I think that it’s pretty safe to say a lot of people are, as numerous games have failed once they’ve been taken to Hollywood. Films such as Doom, Silent Hill, Blood Rayne, and Super Mario Bros. (if you can remember this one) have all pretty much failed despite being based on their much more popular video game counterparts.

Silent Hill


And, unfortunately, things haven’t looked too bright for the future of game-to-movie adaptations. But that could all change in the future if Scott Miller has anything to say about the matter.

Scott Miller is the co-founder and CEO of video game developer 3D Realms Entertainment. And his company has pounded out hit game after hit game over the years with “Wolfenstein”, “Duke Dukem”, and “Max Payne” as a few of the notable ones. But Miller wants to do more than make successful games and he just so happens to have a vision for where he wants to take video game-to-movie adaptations.

Super Mario


He plans to make video games with their transitions to movies in mind the whole way. And in order to accomplish these lofty goals, Scott has launched two companies called the Radar Group and Depth Entertainment. Rader Group will be responsible for working the video game side and Depth Entertainment will work the movies-from-games side.

This all sounds great but without a method to go along with these companies, Miller’s idea might not differ a whole lot from other companies. That’s where his “storyverse” concept comes into play.

Miller believes that there are certain ideas that exhibit success no matter what form of entertainment they are taken to. This is because their concepts create a story universe, or something that translates to universal entertainment. In his opinion, the best ones are Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings.

Max Payne


And, in unison with his beliefs, these three franchises have all done well at creating good movies, games, and books. But Miller wants to go beyond just movies and that’s why he is relying on the help of Depth Entertainment president Scott Faye to not only present the storyverse ideas to Hollywood, but to television production companies as well.

According to Faye, “It would be unwise to throw all the media eggs into one basket and simply say that all of Radar's games are going to be films. I'm sure there are going to be IP’s coming down the road from Radar to Depth that will be better suited for TV, and so that's the path we'll take with Depth serving as the production company.”

He went on to say that, “Filmmakers often disregard what made the video game so successful in the first place, something they wouldn't do if they were creating a movie from a John Grisham book or a revered graphic novel. Depth's role will be to guarantee the sanctity of the video game IP; we will insure that the valuable underpinnings will be preserved throughout the development process.”

DOOM


Miller, Faye, and Depth’s first test will be “Max Payne” which is scheduled to be done in mid to late May and is supposed to be released on October 17th. Games they are working on are “Earth no More”, “Prey 2”, and “Incarnate”.

But don’t expect them to rush anything with these new projects as Faye added, “We want each of our media to stand on its own. In our opinion, when you try to release a game and a movie simultaneously, you compromise the quality of one or the other, and it's usually the game that gets the short end of the stick. Movies usually take 10-15 months to create while it's hard to make a good game so quickly.”

It’s easy to be skeptical of the game-to-movie conversions as few have been anything to talk about but what Faye and Miller envision does provide some optimism. For their sake, and the rest of us who want to see good video game-based movies, let’s hope that this turns out to be more than optimism, and becomes a success!



Article by Jake Olson.

Apr 18, 2008
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