The infamous Super Mario Bros. was Hollywood’s first attempt at turning a recognizable video game into a feature-length movie, and based on how awful the finished product was, you’d imagine it would all be uphill from there. Unfortunately, however, console-to-screen adaptations are still struggling to escape the stigma of being labeled as a cursed subgenre, but there have definitely been signs of a resurgence.
Not only have five of the six highest-grossing video game movies ever been released since 2016, but the only two efforts to have been awarded a Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes arrived within nine months of each other when Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog scored a 68% and 63% respectively. Monster Hunter may have ended the winning streak, but there are some major releases coming next year to try and turn the tide.
The Mortal Kombat and Resident Evil reboots are both on the way, but the biggest of the bunch is Uncharted, which stars Tom Holland as Nathan Drake in a blockbuster that spent over a decade stuck in development hell. There’s a lot riding on the potential success or failure of the big budget action adventure, then, especially when Sony have indicated they’re planning on adapting a huge number of their AAA video game titles for film and television.
The company are planning seven TV shows and three movies based on their gaming properties, in a push to integrate the two art forms closer than ever before, and it’ll happen exclusively on the One Sony platform because people don’t have enough services to pay for already. Based on the genre’s track record over the last three decades, though, the higher ups at Sony should probably wait and see how Uncharted fares before focusing a great deal of their time and money on a slew of similar projects.
