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Movies Media Entertainment Games

More Game To Movie Translations In Progress 47

Thanks to Yahoo/Hollywood Reporter for their article discussing the latest batch of videogame-to-movie adaptations in progress, which focuses on a completely different set of films to yesterday's article on Dungeon Siege. This time, Impact Pictures, who "which wrapped principal photography of its $40 million-range 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse' sequel Friday in Toronto", is profiled, and they discuss forthcoming movies from the company, helmed by Mortal Kombat director Paul W.S. Anderson, including "a $50 million adaptation of Atari's best-selling 'Driver' game", and, weirdly, a "big-screen version of Tecmo's blockbuster 'Dead or Alive' fighting game... [which] will provide some PG-13 fighting action and humor, devised by screenwriter J.F. Lawton ('Pretty Woman')."
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More Game To Movie Translations In Progress

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  • Movies? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Etone ( 627948 )
    Studios these days!

    They were better off back in my day when games with flimsy stories were ported to shoddy Saturday morning cartoons, like they should be.

    -e-
    • This is highly amusing. Games based on genre films being made into genre films...

      I guess it just confirms that Hollywood has, indeed, run out of ideas. Or maybe its just that the most creative medium right now is video games (which I personally think).

  • Just what the world needs more of... Bad movies based on games with bad stories. Dead or Alive is my favorite example of a bad story. Anyone even know what the story is? I don't, I just know some lucky SOB got to program a boob bounce matrix!
  • I'm hoping that the Bloodrayne movie is decent:

    http://www.gamecubenetwork.com/cube.news?3488 [gamecubenetwork.com]

  • i was almost positive that hollywood movies couldn't have any less content than they do already, but i was wrong!
  • Um yea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by quantax ( 12175 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @09:11PM (#7383431) Homepage
    I failing to understand why they are picking these games for conversion. Dungeon Seige for 1.5 hours, what the hell? What about Morrowind or some other classic D&D quest with a real plot. But Dungeon Seige is good compared to Dead or Alive or Driver; DoA has zero plot to develop from, so I think we can expect another street fighter here. And as far as Driver, what the hell? Theres plenty of good car-chase movies without making one about a game about car-chases. Hollywood must be sadly misinformed or something, since I can think of plenty of video games which offer far more possibilities based on existing plots. Resident Evil atleast has a plot, though its not terribly original, its there and its something, so I can give them that, but DoA the movie sounds weak.
    • Re:Um yea (Score:3, Insightful)

      My guess would be that there are a couple of things at work here. First of all, say you're a movie producer and you own the rights to this somewhat poor script for generic movie Y. Now during the course of reading the script for Y, you notice that some scenes match a hit video game that has sold very well on a multitude of platforms. Well golly - let's slap that license on there and make some easy money! Now I don't know if more people are familiar with Dungeon Siege or Morrowind or Driver or DoA. My guess
    • Re:Um yea (Score:3, Funny)

      by The Munger ( 695154 )
      Alright, bear with me. GTA: The Movie. You've got to admit, it's got a bit of story and background. I'd love to see Bruce Campbell [imdb.com] playing Tommy Vercetti as a comedic gangster (So he's not Italian - I don't care). I could see him slip right into the role.

      Then again, why not use the voice of Vice City, Ray Liotta [imdb.com]. I can't quite see him doing the comedic aspect as well, but we'd all recognise his voice straight off and he has done the Mobster film before [imdb.com].
      • yeah, lets call it scarface [imdb.com] GTA3 game wouldnt be bad.... but Vice City has litereally hundreds of intentional similarities to scarface.
        • Yes, that's because it parodies scarface amoungst other references. There have been movie parodies before. A movie parody topped the box office last week (Scary Movie 3). The point is that GTA has enough of its own story and background that you could make a movie.
    • The only thing they have going for it is T&A, esp. the shaking ones during intense fights. This concept works as a game because there aren't real actresses playing the parts.

      No actress that is of the "caliber" to be a DoA stand-in would subject herself to that level of fan-service. All three Charlie's Angels would have to go under the knife first.
      It could only be a good film if it WASN'T rated PG13 and actually was violent or pornographic.

      Sadly, it will be neither of things, nor can it be tongue-in-ch
      • I was going to bitch about everyone discounting the coolness of DoA. But I realized that you are correct. Making it a PG13 movie would be a complete waste of time. I'm with you, anything but an R rated DoA movie is just going to be a riduculus farce targeted only at 12 year olds.
    • DoA has zero plot to develop from

      Have you played any DOA fighter past #1?

      You can argue the storyline isn't any good, but saying it has zero storyline is simply wrong (I personally think it needs to be presented a little more obviously, as Americans seem easily confused by it - a 'what has occurred before' intro for each game would really help). For example, the ongoing plot of Kasumi and her brother - she became a Runaway Shinobi in game 2 to seek out her lost brother who was brainwashed by DOATEC. These
  • by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @09:33PM (#7383538) Homepage Journal
    ...until Tetris comes out.
  • Oh boy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Monday November 03, 2003 @09:45PM (#7383588) Homepage Journal
    I just finished watching Hulk like half an hour ago. You can probably imagine, I didn't find this artice exciting.

    My main problem with video game/comicbook/cartoon adaptions is that live-action movies are not the right medium for it. Video games and cartoons are very single-dimensional when it comes to personality. How do you adapt human depth to a character without destroying it? Spiderman comes to mind. Remember the villain in that movie? Who can imagine a guy really turning into that?

    What's the solution? I wish they'd think about what this medium is strong at and focus on its strengths. Live action is great for human interaction, it stucks as a superhero medium. Wanna use live action? Okay, at least be kind enough to make the experience worthwhile. X-Men comes to mind. Don't want your movie to be like that? Okay, at LEAST consider an animated film. You have an enitrely different range of advantages with animation.

    I really wish movies were made to be entertained instead of to draw money.
    • Video games and cartoons are very single-dimensional when it comes to personality.

      And movies have had no track record of having single-dimensional characters? What about books? They're a much more limited medium than comic-books or video games but Charles Dickens (unfortunately) didn't seem to have a problem building ridiculously complex characters. Strong and complete human characters can be developed independent of medium. Many (not all) video games ignore personality development to focus on gamep

  • Star Wars Galaxies!
  • 'After narrowly surviving the lab incident in Raccoon Forest, Alice wakes up in the middle of Raccoon City, a city of the dead, now she must escape before Umbrellas newest creation, Nemesis, finds her.. '

    Could we at least get the continuity correct? Resident Evil 1 (both the game and the movie) took place in/under a mansion. It had nothing to do with any forestlike areas (unless you consider the greenhouse area to be the Everglades). I know Hollywood likes to butcher video games during their transition to t

    • I've only seen the movie (which was pretty bad, Milla perving factor notwithstanding) but weren't there some scenes out in/near a forest. Either her flashbacks or something else?
    • Direct Translations of the plot don't always work as well as a slightly reworked version. Remember, there's only 1.5-2 hours to develop the story, not 10-15.

      That said, I feel compelled to point out that the mansion was in the forest. If you watch the god-awful intro video on the original PSX copy of RE (The gamecube version removed it, as did one of the classics or director's cut editions), you'll see the Stars team helicoptering in and then running through the forest to the mansion as they try to escape
      • Umm, no, the Gamecube version still has an intro video. And if my memory serves me correctly, it starts out with a news report, then the Stars team helicoptering in and then running through the forest to the mansion as they try to escape the zombie dogs. It just looks a lot better this time around.

        --Jeremy
        • wow, a late response here.

          I was referring to the live-action intro movie in the original PSX version (the big box edition, before PSX games shipped in jewel cases). They cast actors who looked vaguely like the game characters. It ended with this terrible, UPN action show style intro where the live actors were shown doing some sort of vaguely cop thing for three seconds(loading gun, adjusting armor, etc.) while the narrator called their name out one by one (Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine). All of this wa
  • ...you throw it away on producing a movie based on a video game.
  • How do you get a decent plot from any of these games? Not to mention why let horrible writers write the screenplay? The only game I could muster being a good movie is FFVII but that's because it almost played like a film.
    • Re:HOW!!!??? (Score:3, Insightful)

      If at Square they did an outstanding job writing the history of FFVII, why the hell they did "The spirit within" with such an awful screenplay?

      I think that the point is that histories for games are written from people who feel free to try daring solution, because the key of the succes of a game is to find a core of people who really, really, really love to play it (otherwise they wouldn't spend tens of hours and bucks on it); screenplays have on the contrary the main goal to be pleasant to the masses, so
  • a $50 million adaptation of Atari's best-selling 'Driver' game

    What? I was fairly convinced that the game was based on the 1978 flick, The Driver [imdb.com]. I mean come on, they're both based on a driver-for-hire, they have the same name, and they both sacrifice plot and voice acting in the name of ridiculous car chase scenes.

    All of you should go out and rent this movie..

    Now.
  • by sideshow ( 99249 )
    Check out his "extensive" filmography [imdb.com]. What know the worse of it? George "Night of the Living Dead" Romero was origianlly signed up to write and direct the Resident Evil movie. He even wrote a script [allmoviescripts.com]. Then some genius at Capcom says, "When has Romero made a movie out of a video game? This Anderson guy made the movie Mortal Kombat [imdb.com] so he must be the man for the job!"

    I fucking hate Hollywood.
    • after reading the Romero script I am glad they didn't use it. They already have the story of Chris and Jill in the mansion.. it was the video game.. there was no need to redo that story.

      While the actual resident evil movie could have been much better.. at least it didn't retell the first story.
  • So we all wanted really good films based on video games...but now they're just making more crap + using broad concepts/plot ideas from the games.

    Meh, lets see Super Mario Brothers 2: Time Travelin' Koopas all-ready.

  • I was watching The Ring and thinking what a how well scripted it is for a videogame. You would think since that movie stories are generally better written that this progression would make more sense.
  • Why can't they pick anything good to make into a movie? How about Legend of Zelda. or Metroid. Maybe some love for Castlevania. Just some thoughts...
  • Why did simoniker think that this is a new concept? It's not. Game makers and movie companies have been doing this for years.

    As long as they don't take the Matrix route, using a game to bridge a movie, then I'm fine with it. (BTW - the Matrix game sucks bad. Real bad).

    I enjoy the fact that games sometimes spawn movies or that are spawned AFTER movies (i.e. Star Wars series) but not as a link between movies.
    • Was the Matrix game set between movies 2 & 3? Did they do that because they knew that some Matrix fans would want their "Matrix fix" between movies, and could make ~$50 by giving it to them? Or was the game an ad for the next movie--to get gamers excited about the third movie coming out?

      I wonder what factor the price of a movie (~$10) in comparison to the cost of game ($50) has on business models. Also, the cost of producing a movie compared to a game. On the other hand, a popular movie clearly bri
  • Baldur's Gate? Might actually make for more of a plot. That aside...

    The same guy who directed Mortal Kombat? Now you know the movie's going to suck!

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