TL;DR
- The success of HBO’s “The Last of Us” has streamers rapidly expanding their game-related series, with game IP providing culturally relevant content that can relatively easily adapted.
- While it seems likely that video games could be the next frontier for box office dominating big-budget adaptations, the medium has plenty of quirks that will make the adaptation process difficult.
- At least 60 game-to-screen adaptations are currently in various stages of development.
READ MORE: Exclusive: Video game adaptations soar 47% in 2022 as ‘quality perception’ rises (Television Business International)
HBO’s The Last of Us has been hailed as the first good video game adaptation. After years of trying has Hollywood finally got the formula right — or is it just that video games developers have become better at storytelling than the studios?
Perhaps neither, but one thing everyone seems to agree upon is that The Last Of Us provides a benchmark for the rapidly number of game-related feature films and series coming our way.
Global video game adaptations soared by 47% from 2021 to 2022, according to analyst firm Omdia, and streamers are now increasing investments in bringing games to screens as high-end live action series.
“Streaming services and studios need more content to monetize their services and reach profitability,” Maria Rua Aguete, chief media analyst at Omdia, tells Richard Middleton at Television Business International. “Dedicated fan bases across IP such as games, books and podcasts are becoming increasingly valuable.”
In some quarters this business concept is being called “transmedia storytelling.” It’s not a new idea, as studios have consistently done their level best to wring as much IP out of a successful franchise as they can by spinning features into TV shows and video games and all sorts of other media merch.
In addition, game studios were already looking to Hollywood to spread their stories and have struck development deals with streamers. “Now they have an ideal to aspire to,” points out Will Bedingfield at Wired.
Broadly speaking, if a story is extended, it’s transmedia, so the third episode of The Last of Us, which explores the love between minor characters Bill and Frank, counts; other episodes constitute straightforward adaptation.
“Playing The Last of Us, few people thought of Bill as much more than a trap-setting maniac; watching The Last of Us, they saw him in a different light,” says Bedingfield. “The game’s universe grew deeper.”
READ MORE: After The Last of Us, Everything Will Be Transmedia (Wired)
To the game studios, it seems obvious why the TV sector is taking increased notice in the content and experiences they are creating.
“AAA video games are very close to TV series (not movies) in terms of creating complex narratives and building strong relationships between in-game characters and gamers/audience, which is a great foundation to build on,” Bartosz Sztybor, comic book and animation narrative director at Polish video game developer CD Projekt Red, tells TBI.
The size of the gaming market — two-thirds of US consumers are gamers across mobile, PC and console platforms — also provides huge cross-selling potential, meaning more adaptations can be expected.
Adaptations are also in the rise because gaming IP tends “to lean into the political and social zeitgeist,” the Omdia analyst adds, citing the fresh approach to LGBTQ+ representation and multigenerational lead characters in The Last of Us.
Yet the formula that made the HBO drama a hit could simply be the “genius” pairing of showrunner Craig Mazin with The Last of Us game creator Neil Druckmann. As HBO Max chief content officer Casey Bloys tells TBI, “there is nothing particular about video games that make them better or worse to develop,” and stresses that he was drawn to the project due to having had “a very good experience” with Mazin on his drama Chernobyl.
Helene Juguet, who runs the French division of Ubisoft Film & Television, says original creators should not necessarily serve as a showrunner or writer, “because those are two very different types of expertise.”
She does suggest, however, that it is “absolutely necessary for the show’s creative team to deep dive into the world of the game they are adapting” so they can understand what the creator was aiming to achieve and connect with “what makes the fans tick.”
“At the same time that video game adaptations have been waxing, superhero movies have been waning,” says Andrew King of The Gamer, who has crunched the numbers. Shazam: The Fury of the Gods opened with a $65 million global weekend, $20 million under the studio’s lowest estimations and was just the latest in a line of superhero movies that have underperformed.
Though Spider-Man: No Way Home was a massive hit, the MCU has now had two flops in close succession with 2021’s Eternals and last month’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, while none of its TV shows have lit up water coolers like The Last of Us.
With the growing sense of superhero fatigue, there is fair speculation for video game adaptions to take their place.
“In a world where studios seem primarily interested in proven properties with an excited fan base already willing to pay for admission, it’s not hard to imagine video game adaptations becoming the new superhero genre,” says Devin Baird, writing at MovieWeb.
READ MORE: Are Video Games Adaptations the Next Superhero Genre? (MovieWeb)
Studios may be tempted to leap onto games as the next big multi-universe franchise, but the same approach that worked with the MCU will be harder with a video game as the source material.
“Comics have always married graphic art and written stories, but games have often treated stories as an afterthought, a connective tissue added after the fact to make the transitions between levels and set pieces run more smoothly,” says King. “Hollywood execs quickly run into the inconvenient reality that games don’t tend to provide much story justification for why characters from different series are suddenly in the same world together.”
Plus, each games hardware manufacturer has its own exclusive series but, unlike with DC and Marvel, just because Microsoft owns Master Chief and Marcus Fenix, that doesn’t mean they exist in the same universe.
“The upside of this is that audiences likely won’t have to keep up with a bunch of interconnected movies and TV shows just to understand the next big thing. Mario isn’t going to end on a tease for The Last of Us season 2.”
READ MORE: Are Video Game Adaptations The New Superhero Movies? (The Gamer)
The reality could also be, as an article in Time magazine points out, that video games have become so cinematic in their scope, storytelling and visuals that they’ve superseded some films in terms of their ambition and emotional resonance.
“The Last of Us stayed close to its source material exactly because the original game was designed, essentially, as interactive cinema with all the twists and heartbreaks one might expect from a prestige project.”
READ MORE: The 18 Most Anticipated Video Game Adaptations Coming to Film and TV (Time)
So, while it seems likely that video games could be the next frontier for box office-dominating big-budget adaptations, the medium has plenty of quirks that will make the adaptation process difficult.
There are currently upwards of 60 game-based productions in development and analyst firms like Newzoo are already reporting that game IP is climbing in value “as transmedia becomes more relevant.”
READ MORE: Games Market Trends to Watch in 2023 and Beyond | Part III (Newzoo)
James Wan and Jason Blum are adapting the popular multiplayer horror game Dead by Daylight, John Wick director Chad Stahelski is adapting the PlayStation samurai adventure Ghost of Tsushima into a new action movie, and Amazon Prime Video is making the popular post-apocalyptic series Fallout into a TV show.
READ MORE: James Wan and Jason Blum to Develop Dead by Daylight Horror Feature Adaptation (MovieWeb)
READ MORE: Ghost of Tsushima Movie Director Believes The Last of Us Proved Video Game Adaptations Can Be Done Right (MovieWeb)
READ MORE: Fallout: Plot, Cast, Release Date and Everything Else We Know (MovieWeb)
Time lists a number of game-to-screen adaptations, including Gran Turismo starring Orlando Bloom, which was released in August; a Tomb Raider reboot, which Fleabag writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge is putting together for Amazon Prime; Bioshock, a post-apocalyptic thriller with Hunger Games director Francis Lawrence attached for Netflix; a series based on Metal Gear Solid with Oscar Isaac attached; and Borderlands, a feature with Cate Blanchett, Jack Black, and Jamie Lee Curtis adapted by TLOU’s Craig Mazin.
This might just be the start of a new wave of video game movies that rule movie theaters and streaming content to become the new dominant media.
