Hollywood Looks to Video Games

I found this pretty interesting.

Just curious what SW thinks about this?

Also, I just really loved the end when the author brings up doing a Gears movie based on this commercial, one of if not the best ad ever for a video game. :P

Thoughts SW?

The Story.

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Hollywood Looks to Video Games

They are lazy. There is content. It’s a perfect marriage.

THE EDITORSMAY 15, 2024

Submitted by jmfilm

Disney is in trouble. Paramount faces a sale. Both giants are laying off employees left and right. The summer box office schedule points to a weak year. Even the normally off-target pundits at NPR realize something is amiss with Hollywood. It might even be collapsing. With AI generated content around the corner, it will only get worse. This is a prison of their own making. They happily donned the ideological garments that taint every production. They relied so much on CGI that replacing it with pure AI visuals will be seamless. They have to get back to basics. They need good money makers to build back up. Recent trends might offer a path forward. Prepare for a wave of video game movies.

It sounds stupid, but the trend is there. The Sonic movie was a runaway hit grossing over $300 million with merchandise to sell. The Super Mario Brothers film cracked $1.3 billion as a perfect children’s movie. The Fallout franchise inspired an Amazon series with decent buzz. Hollywood is lazy. Hollywood wants IP that has a built in audience to guarantee a minimum for ticket sales to justify budgets. This is a match made in heaven.

One could point to the awful Halo series and deny this, but Hollywood will beat a trend into the dirt as long as they can make money. Just look at Disney’s handling of Marvel IP. There have been winners, and there will be more. There is a wealth of video games with giant fanbases or even just rabidly engaged fanbases. Consumer engagement and property visibility are already measured by a plethora of social media content or lack thereof. Special effects can bring anything to life now and look and move in a smooth manner. The extra kicker is that the rights to these properties are relatively cheap. That is what Hollywood needs now to guarantee winners and in the event of a flop, have a small loss.

In 2023, Hollywood took a property languishing in development limbo for years and produced “Five Nights at Freddy’s”. It was a giant success most importantly on a $20 million budget. This fit nicely into the Hollywood money maker genre of low budget horror. For the producers, this was a popular game with a built in audience of a decade of multimedia exposure, a deep backstory to mine for one film, and a Youtube ecosystem of influencers and content creators continuously promoting the film’s upcoming release. The filmmakers went so far as to cast a handsome Youtube nerd in the film in a bit part. Was there a deal in place to have him continuously make videos for his millions of subscribers about this game series and the upcoming film in exchange for his little part? Who knows, but what a cheap marketing angle for Hollywood.

Setting the broader Hollywood effect aside, was this a good film? Surprisingly, it was a well-made, normal horror film. Zero stars. You recognize faces from smaller roles decades ago. Adapting a video game is difficult, and for background, FNAF is simply a survival horror game where in multiple editions you are in one room at the helm of some electronics that keep evil robots at bay. You must survive the night. You can play through a FNAF game in one hour. The adaptation had to build in a story so you would identify and cheer on the lead, who is just an everyman since in the game it is a first person perspective that you are immersed in. The script did a good job with this to make it personal, and reviewers completely missed that the back story for the protagonist is actually a means to explain the backstory for the evil animatronics. There has to be a reason for the protagonist to not quite after the first couple of nights, and they write in a good little emotional reason. They make the leads connection to his sister the emotional core, and that contrasts to the generic American landscape setting.

The film does fail a bit with limited scares and not as much hide and seek chase. The potential for incredibly horrifying hide and seek sequences (like in the game) was high, and it did not deliver. There is the weird part befriending the evil animatronics, which took the edge off the horror element of animatronics coming to life. The genius of Hitchcock’s horror and suspense was that he made normal, everyday things and places we consider safe suddenly become death traps: wide open corn fields, showers, birds, sleepy Spanish missions, etc. The idea that Chuck E. Cheese comes to life and wants to kill you is perfect. It is a lurking feeling that ‘80s and ‘90s kids might have felt seeing them sing and move awkwardly between bites of pizza that had too much sugar in the sauce. A more true to the game adaptation still would have had to have an outside the restaurant storyline, which could have revealed clues into the horrific past of the place by having the lead do some local historical research. This would have removed the emotional core of the brother-sister story arc and made for a darker film. This could be the template for a sequel.

And there will be a sequel. This movie made too much money to not have a sequel. It has too much backstory and lore to not mine for a simple ninety minute horror film with a $20 million budget for pallets of cash from hungry consumers. The marketing campaign is too easy for Hollywood. They do not have to make trailers and buy ad spots in expensive television markets when all they have to do is throw crumbs at YouTube channels. This provides a template for studios. They love built in audiences. They love templates for generating hits. Many would love to see a ninety minute action movie adaptation of Gears of War that has the pathos of the original one minute ad from 2006. If this becomes the new hot trend for Hollywood, we will likely endure a lot of garbage adaptations just for the opportunity to see one gem.

TV series would be better, trying to jam a game's story/lore into 90 minutes is a recipe for disaster.

I'd take that as well as long as it sticks to the script and done really well. ;o

Meaning, nothing like that puke of a show, Halo. lol :P

They milked, buttered and cheesed super hero movies for over a decade. Now they are going to do the same with video games.

@Pedro:

Especially when you look at those numbers for Sonic and Mario movies. lol :P

People get really snooty about this, the idea that something designed for a mass audience, not le_cinemaphiles who watch black and white European art-house movies, is automatically bad. Namely, Marvel. It's become the punching bag. Starwars to a degree as well.

Some of it I think can be objectively fine crit, like Disneys terrible CGI/live-action remakes that come across more cynical.

Video games itself, the hobby, was heavily looked down upon, attacked and still do get the odd attitude that it's below people.

Basically, ending this nonsensical ramble. If it's good, it doesn't matter.

Games look to Hollywood, Hollywood looks to games..... It's as if they are both... entertainment!

Maybe it's the successor to the superhero movie trend.

It could either satisfy people who love a certain property, it could inspire creators who grew up being fans of a property, but it could also become a crutch for people looking to churn out uninspired paydays for themselves.

If it becomes a successful trend, hopefully it doesn't harm the prospects for new and original ideas to get greenlit, and hopefully the market doesn't get oversaturated with them.

There’s plenty of movies/tv shows based on games that I’d be interested in seeing so I’m definitely down with that.

If they're just going to turn it into the next superhero fad, then no thanks. Quit trying to chase/create trends. Instead of taking a decent idea and running it into the ground, why not spread it around to all the genres?

When you get a hankerin' for a taco, do you then you then only eat tacos for the next year? Hopefully not you psycho. You go "that was delightful, but now I want spaghetti, and then maybe some fried rice, and then a steak, and maybe some pie". We need good fantasy movies, sci-fi, drama, comedy... all of em. But more importantly, they need to be good. They could make a thousand video game movies, but if they're all directed by Uwe Boll, then who cares?

I’ve noticed the trend towards making more movies and tv series based on video games the last couple years. The most recent “Fallout” adaptation is pretty well done, I haven’t seen the Halo series but haven’t heard anything good about it. As long as producers put out a quality work and respect the original game I think it’s a good move for both the film and video game industry.

It’s just naturally convenient. Video games are succeeding and Hollywood is failing. Hollywood has to pander to video games so they can make the profits….and the success they once used to have.

I like to play my games not watch them.

Not a big fan of walking simulators I take it??

@outworld222: That and cinematics.

Do you hate cinematics in general, or the neverending in-game forced ones they do now? I miss the way Blizzard (RIP) used to do it,where you would play several missions or an act, and get rewarded with a well done little mini movie. But I'm beyond sick of in-game stories that I can't escape.

If Hollywood wants to get back their mojo,they need to

1. Make better movies - Fire any writer that has blue hair or a septum ring.

2. Lower ticket prices - It's insane to pay the same or more to watch the movie once as it does to buy it.

3. Lower concessions - I know that's where they make the real money, but surely they can sell more at a lower price, instead of less at a higher price. If you're paying $30+ to watch a movie and have a coke and popcorn... something is wrong.

They really need to make the theater a destination for fun again. The need cool stuff to do, like new games, a merch shop for clothes and movie related items (Navi tails, Harry Potter wands, etc), do more cross promotional stuff, like get your Ghostbusters Proton Pack Nacho bucket at Taco Bell and get a free popcorn refill when you bring it to the theater (that might be a health code violation, but idgaf), or a mini golf place next door. I dunno, just give me an onslaught of fun, without pissing me off before I make it through the door.

Back in the days, video games were trying to be like movies.

Nowadays, movies are trying to be like video games.

@dimebag667: Yeah hate all cinematics.

It wasn't always the case, back in the day I didn't mind a short one. I fondly remember the ones from the original C&C game. I thought they were good because it felt like they were talking directly to me and involving me in the game.

These days I find them absolutely intolerable and most games inudate you with them ans some drvs have the nerve to make them unskippable.

But I'm also a racing game fan first so stories in video games are just meh anyway.

@last_lap: It's crazy that I've never really played C&C. I played Generals or something on my buddies computer once, but I've always wanted to see those fmvs on Red Alert. I miss when beating a game rewarded with a cool cutscene or art, and that was the only way to see it. Or when games had silly intros, like Goro smacking the Acclaim logo, or that Turok iguana with guns.

What are your top racing games? The last one I played was the first NFS Underground.

I too remember back in the 16-bit era where the characters use to play around with Sega logo.

As for racing games, Man I have played probably a thousand racing games in the last 40yrs, Sega Rally on the Sega Saturn is one of my faves, 4 tracks, 4 cars, 500+hrs on it. I can find enjoyment even out of the worst racing games lol.

I have other faves like both types of Forza's, to Blur and so on there's just too many to mention.