What’s your favorite videogame movie? C’mon, as a gamer you’re obligated to have one! What, drawing a blank? Don’t feel bad – I’m pretty sure I don’t have a favorite game-gone-movie either, unless Scott Pilgrim vs. the World counts. Few silver-screen adaptations of games have been of high quality, and even the ones that have seen some mainstream success (like the Resident Evil films) are more just campy guilty pleasures that you watch drunk in your college dorm room. Am I right guys? Haha… haha… ahem.
Anyways, things may be looking up for game-inspired cinema, as titles like Shadow of the Colossus, Deus Ex, and more were discussed at a recent Comic-Con panel centered around a potentially incoming “Golden Age of videogame movies.”
Included on the panel were a number of notable game-movie conspirators, such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution screenwriter C. Robert Cargill and Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li director Justin Marks. Honestly, I had no idea there even was a Street Fighter movie, so I looked it up and quickly learned that it was, to put it simply, terrible. Golden Age, indeed.
Also present was Patrick O’Brien, the VP of Entertainment at EA, Â and he wasn’t hesitant in sharing his philosophy on the best way to go about getting a game-movie off the ground. In his view, the process ought to begin with the studio and publisher who own the IP in the first place – at that point, the publisher can shop the rights around to various movie studious and go from there. I’m not really sure why or how this differs from any other kind of adaptation, be it a book or an old legend or hieroglyphics on a cave wall (though I guess the Cro-Magnon who owns the IP technically wouldn’t be available). That said, his thoughts are fairly interesting nonetheless.
Elsewhere, Justin Marks revealed that Isaac Clarke was almost killed off for the Dead Space film, and info about the existence of a Shadow of the Colossus film (yes, really!!) was dropped as well. I absolutely love that game, so hopefully they don’t cast Jack Black as Wander.
At any rate, I’d definitely welcome a Golden Age of videogame films – I may just need some more proof before I’m convinced that it’s actually coming.
