Game Changers
Nonetheless, domestic performance remains crucial in regards to perception and acceptance. Alas, foreign box office does not a blockbuster make. Yet even at home there are signs that a change is underfoot, both internally (within Hollywood) and externally (in regards to the gaming industry).
Games themselves have come a long way from their two-dimensional roots. During the era of the arcade game, and the burgeoning games console, video games offered little in terms of a narrative, making them virtually impossible to adapt into anything remotely cinematic.
Even a cursory glance at the contemporary gaming industry reveals that things have changed dramatically. Games have evolved to include narratives and storylines that arguably parallel cinema. It is precisely this cinematic element to gaming, and the creative minds behind it, that can help change the scope of video game movies. Fortunately, Hollywood seems to have grasped the need to collaborate with game developers to bring some much-needed credibility to its adaptations of their source material.
Several upcoming films involve members of the gaming industry among their personnel. Next year’s Assassin’s Creed is produced by the same studio that created it; Ubisoft, which also claims to wield a sizeable amount of creative input on the project. Neil Druckmann, the writer-director of The Last of Us (one of the most celebrated and cinematic console games of its time) is working on the screenplay for the currently in-development film (which is also rumoured to star Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams), and – in the more immediate future – Sony’s Ratchet and Clank will see the game’s writer and voice cast reprise their roles.
Sony and Ubisoft are evidently dominating the conversation. The latter has adopted a particularly significant business model in its similarity to that of Marvel’s. Like the comic book entertainment behemoth, Ubisoft is carefully guarding its own gaming properties in the guise of a newly created studio; Ubisoft Motion Pictures (unlike Marvel Studios, however, it is shopping around to find film industry partners). Other noteworthy adaptations Ubisoft has in the pipeline include a proposed Ghost Recon franchise that is to be helmed by Hollywood’s foremost purveyor of explosions and robot warfare: Michael Bay.
