News broke last week that Avalanche Studios Just because the franchise joined the likes of BioShock, Gears of War, and more to get a Hollywood adaptation. That in itself isn’t all that surprising considering how much those adaptations hit audiences.
What there is it’s amazing how Guard dogs a movie in development at New Regency, the Just Cause movie will most likely be released without a video game to ride on the movie trailer. An avalanche, as far as we know, is currently underway Contraband for Xbox Game Studios, and a new open-world series hasn’t been released since 2018 Just Cause 4. Last year, Square Enix killed a free game The Just Cause mobile game is minutes away from its official launch, and it’s anyone’s guess whether the series will return.
So, if the Avalanche calmly does not have Just Cause 5 whether it’s saving for a rainy day or some remastering that’s out of the question, there’s a good chance the final movie will just get booted and the series will be MIA in nearly (or more) ten years.
It’s clear that Hollywood is ready to go all-in on gaming now that it has many consistent successes under its belt. He also seems more than willing to do it without the games themselves. Q: Will gaming companies benefit from this arrangement?
The main image for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us Part II: Remastered.
The relationship between video games and Hollywood is evolving
In the old days, big marquee films simply got extra plays as part of an overall marketing plan. Although there were some notable exceptions, many of the ties were of dubious merit and were often made relatively short turnover. From the late 2000s to the 2010s, they gradually disappeared to make way for games like Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham series and Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man. These were single-player games set in their own self-contained canon.
Since they weren’t required to release in a tight launch window alongside the film, a longer development time is possible. Promoting the film became a secondary goal, accomplished through post-release costumes or other DLC goodies. Insomniac’s first Spider-game had DLC costumes inspired by Tom Holland’s sequels and the Spider-Verse animated films released between 2018 and 2021, and Rocksteady gave Batman: Arkham Knight players got a free Batman skin by Robert Pattinson (of Batman fame) just last year.
Sales of games have increased at the expense of their big screen siblings
Having a new game in stores during an adaptation has paid off before: Naughty Dog’s 2022 PlayStation 5 remake for the original The last of us there was a huge spike in sales just a week after the HBO show premiered; Gran Turisma 7 (also from 2022), after his own film in 2023 reportedly saw a 13 percent player promotion. A remake of the first for PlayStation 4 by Insomniac Games Ratchet & Clank in 2016 was made specifically to tie it in with the film, and was the series’ fastest-selling before the franchise spent the next five years on ice.
By contrast, Castlevania has gotten by just fine without a game in ten years and only since recent Netflix shows Dead cells crossover to its name. The Fallout games increased in popularity after the show premiered on Prime Video. Although the series has been renewed for a second season and Amazon is boasting about the number of viewers, it seems that Bethesda is going to take your time in response via a new entry. Adaptation doesn’t always mean a new game; both Days passed and Gravity Rush are being adapted into a film despite canceled sequels or studios outages.
Mario and Luigi in the movie Super Mario Bros.
Of all the developers, Nintendo may have found the most perfect Hollywood relationship. Compared to other companies, it’s more thoughtful about what gets adapted and how, mainly because of the tragedy of the almost ubiquitous 1993 Mario movie. But it ended up working. Two Mario games came out in 2023, and neither was made in connection with the upcoming Super Mario Bros. movie. Due to Nintendo’s heavy involvement in its production, the film works as “just another Mario game” rather than something the entire franchise hinges on. The same feeling could apply to the upcoming Legend of Zelda movie: if a game (new or remake) comes out in the same relative proximity, it’ll feel like a natural crossover rather than a predetermined control.
Through the ever-growing Pokemon anime series and movies, Nintendo practically created transmedia as we know it today. The annual games often serve as the basis for trading card games and anime, all of which have been staples of pop culture for decades. A child will watch a show that makes him want to buy cards (hopefully sooner scalpers take this chance) or the latest game or any other course of action you want to apply. That kind of cultural cache can’t be built up the way corporations often want it to be, and it helps even more that Nintendo simply has a game for every occasion that it can release whenever it wants.
Publishers like Sony and Microsoft would love to see their games become big transmedia ventures, where the games are turned into movies that lead to increased sales and further franchises. Many of these potential franchises grow out of double and triple plays, the latter of which have become more expensive to build. Movies are no strangers to big budgets, but games have started to really feel that strain, and not every one of them can get away with a remaster or a PC port before a film adaptation. In other cases, a game project aimed at developing an adaptive impulse can be simple get an axe for reasons beyond the control of the developer. Sudden studio closures or layoffs can be as game-changing as turning a game into a giant multimedia machine.
Gaming and Hollywood have had a relationship for decades, but new film adaptations show just how one-sided it has become. The first bent itself into a pretzel in preparation for adaptation, but it does not always work. Audiences for both have become experienced at detecting when companies are directing media toward a specific end goal, and sometimes refuse to play along. Ensuring a healthy dynamic between the two environments going forward will mean less clarity in developing an IP strategy, as Nintendo did. It’s important to be directly involved in the adaptation, but it’s equally important to know when to let off the gas and let things play out organically.