Missing in Action: Video Game Movies

For those of you who pay attention to news within the gaming industry and social media, do you ever notice how often developers seem to squeal with excitement when they announce that they’ve attained the rights to turn their video game into a film adaption. And while that’s all well and good to hear that some of our favorite games are supposedly going to make it to the big screen, we usually end up going a few years wondering…uh, ok, what’s the status on these movies?!

I can think of a few recent examples of how films were announced for some of the most popular video games out there and how years later, we haven’t heard an ounce of news about how far along into production these movies are. Gears of War was slated to begin production of a film through New Line Cinema back in 2007 but, to the best of my knowledge, we haven’t heard much else. Well, other than the fact that the director supposedly fronting the movie dropped out to focus on other things.

Blizzard Entertainment announced a Warcraft film (also in 2007…go figure) and initially established that the film would be set for a 2009 release date. Here we are three years after that supposed arrival time and Legendary Pictures hasn’t given us much to hope for quite yet, other than the fact that Sam Raimi (Spider-Man director) would be directing the film and that the movie had supposedly begun production. WoW fans can only hope that Raimi can shift gears toward the project now that Spider-Man 4 was flushed down the toilet in place of a recently-released reboot.

Part of me also can’t help but wonder if we all really want to see these wayward movies released eventually. Video game movies have an infamous reputation for sucking after all. I don’t think a single video game movie released in the last two decades passed a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.


 Despite having front-running actors such as Mark Wahlberg, Jake Gyllenhaal and Angelina Jolie, recent video game adaptions such as Max Payne, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia and Resident Evil were slightly entertaining, but nowhere near stellar. That, combined with director Uwe Boll’s horrendous flops such as Far Cry, bode ill for video game film adaptions.

But, there is still hope and reason to rejoice. Despite how cursed the realm of video game films seems to be, some good news does occasionally slip through the cracks about upcoming adaptions.

Ubisoft recently announced that the lead role in their slated Assassin’s Creed adaption would be played by actor Michael Fassbender. Fassbender is most recently known for his roles as android David in Prometheus and a younger Magneto in X-Men: First Class. This likely means he will play the role of either Crusades-era assassin Altair, or his modern day counterpart, Desmond.

Other video game adaptions seem to be making gradual progress as far as we can tell. As of May 2011, the studio behind the Uncharted film adaption were in the process of drumming up a script for the film and were considering viable casting options for the role of main character Nathan Drake. A Mass Effect film was also announced last year, although that announcement too was laced with confusion and misconceptions; one guy said that the film would be an independent storyline within the universe while someone else said that the film would be directly based off of the first game. Who knows?

Well, I speak for most avid gamers out there when I say that I hope that some of these video game films will eventually come out of the dark dimension that they’ve disappeared to so we can see what they’re all about …for better or worse.