Tons of games have been turned into films. Max Payne is the latest of these, and from what I’ve heard (tho’ I haven’t seen it myself yet) successfully continues the long running disappointment of games to film.
Tell us which (if any) game to film you enjoyed the most and which you think was the most terrible…
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
Electronic Arts has signed a deal with the
The Sims: The Movie is already in production; Dead Space has also had an animated comic/DVD too, and this deal is likely to step up EA’s selection of games that will hit the TV or movie screens.
A third person, action computer game, based on the blockbuster movie WANTED, starring James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman and Angelina Jolie, is to be released later this year. It will be published by Warner Bros. and be developed by GRIN, the development studio behind the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter series.
It’s been talked about, but finally today, Take-Two Interactive announced that it has struck a deal with Universal Studios to bring Bioshock to the big screen.
The movie will be directed by Gore Verbinski, who previously directed the Pirates of the
The summertime movie blockbusters are as common as a rainy day in
Pretty straight forward, real (if very cool).
The BBC launched its iPlayer download service on the Wii internet channel.
The iPlayer allows users to stream selected BBC programmes up to 7 days after they’ve been broadcast - it seems unlikely the PC’s ability to download programmes will be present, given the Wii’s lack of storage. The service is only available in the UK.
This really brings the Wii into prime position for being a full, family entertainment system - way ahead of the 360 and PS3, at least over here. Functionality and ease of use is gradually being ramped up, and it’s hard not to see this as a real feather in the Nintendo cap.
I love this guy. That’s not the news, I just wanted to get it out the way. I love him for winding people up, for not taking himself or the industry too seriously, for being misunderstood, for working the system, and for Postal.
If only the rest of his films weren’t so god awful.
The first bit of ‘news’ came last week with the arrival of an anti-Boll petition, whereby 1 million signatures are being sought in the name of preventing Boll from producing any more films. Ever.
Boll swiftly responded in altogether more entertaining and even coherent fashion.
This prompted a predictable response from Michael Bay: “I find people who rant like that - calling shit about both me, and George Clooney - comes from someone screaming because he is not being heard. He is obviously a sad being.”
And in case you’re after some more Bollisms, he hired a midget to insult Indiana Jones:
On a serious note, it’s time everyone got the joke and gets on with their lives. Yes, most of Boll’s movies are not great. So what? Video games are not so precious that we can’t take our beloved characters being perverted - Bloodrayne and Postal were hardly ever core franchises.
You only need to take a look at some of the responses to Boll’s PR stunts on Youtube to see who the real joke’s being played on:
“Yeah, i think your retarded for doing this, after all, YOUR UP AGAINST INDY 4 AND A LOT OF PEOPLE HATE YOU, HOW ARE YOU NOT RETARDED!!!!” - MegaFat1
Nice one, MegaFat. Nice one.
The Golden Compass, based on the series of books by Philip Pullman, is now in the cinema. And, inevitably, there is a game out for it.
A game which has a Metacritic rating of 44 (that’s the PS2 version, the highest rated of all platforms - the PC version doesn’t have enough reviews to count yet.) That’s a pretty damning score for the first game in what should be a major franchise to rival Harry Potter.
My intel suggests that New Line Cinema greenlit the film and spent 12 months courting major publishers to make the game. It took them ages to decide on which publisher to work with and by the time they were ready to commit, there was about a year to go until the film came out. New Line were insistent that the game had to be ready simulataneously with the theatrical release.
The problem is that games take longer to make than movies. Much longer.
So several publishers said it couldn’t be done in time. Sega bit the bullet, and Shiny developed the game on multiple platforms in an incredibly tight timeframe (possibly as little as 8 months, leaving time for QA and submission to the platform holders.)
The result is a game that really didn’t live up to expectations, and certainly is not the ideal springboard for a major franchise.
Which is a shame for all fans of Philip Pullman. And hopefully a wake-up call to the mavens of the film world. It’s about time they realised that games and movies are different animals, and good games really need time spent on them.
Or maybe that’s eternally optimistic.
IO’s most recent - and ill-received - game, Kane & Lynch, perfectly indicates gaming’s obsession with cinematic values. Time and time again we ask why games seek to compete with and copy another, entirely distinct medium. Gaming has enough of its own to offer, it need not rely on over-familiarity with its linear peer.
And someone outside the industry has realised this far more succinctly than I.
“Hitman is a mediocre movie inspired by a pretty good game. The elements which grant the videogame its quality are clearly impossible to transpose to the screen.”
Dot on, Daniel Etherington of Channel 4 Film. The things that make games good don’t make good films. The things that make films good don’t necessarily stand out in games.
Seems obvious, really.
Thanks to a helpful post by loyal GameShadow Blog reader PJ, I can now reveal that imdb has decided there’s a Prince of Persia: Sands of Time film in the offing. What is it with these adaptations? Why do they play with us so?
It’s switched direction from Michael Bay (yawn) to Mike Newell (double yawn) of Goblet of Fire ‘fame’. It’s still early in production, but rumour has it Jordan Mechner, designer of the original 2D Prince, writer on Sands of Time, and all round cool dude is writing the screenplay. To put that into perspective, he’s the reason Sands of Time was one of the best games ever made, while its two sequels weren’t. To put it lightly.
Watch this space come 2009.
“You’d find that Lady Luck was really a hooker, and you were fresh out of cash.”
I tend, along with most of the rest of the cinema-going public, to think films based on video games have been utter balls. The best one I can come up with so far has been Silent Hill - that’s one half-decent film in god knows how many - and yet they still get made.
With the exception of the upcoming Postal, the Max Payne film is the only thing I’m looking forward to in this general area at the moment. Don’t get me wrong - I think Mark Wahlberg is insane for agreeing to do it. He’s got a perfectly good career, why risk it on something that’s odds on to reek?
However, there’s one important factor here: Mark Wahlberg is Max Payne.
Seriously, if one of them wasn’t polygonised, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Ace,
“After Y2K, the end of the world had become a cliché. But who was I to talk, a brooding underdog avenger alone against an empire of evil out to right a grave injustice.”
We know you like games, that’s pretty obvious from the fact you’re reading this hugely entertaining blog post. But do you like films? Do you like music? Do you like other related merchandise? You do?! Then what are you still doing here when I can offer you a free coupon for our good affiliate HMV offering 15% off purchases for the next two days (ends 02/11/07) - they must be in a generous treat-giving Halloween mood.
The code is HMV036 - click here to visit the store you crazy cats.
