@ GDC: Why Most Game-Based Movies Don’t Live Up To The Hype
Hollywood has been enticed with making video game-based films for almost 20 years, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie back in 1990 (the original comic evolved into a cartoon series, toys and a video game), to last year’s Max Payne. And in theory, it should be a win for both gaming companies and the studios: gamers tend to be rabid, loyal fans, and some of the best games have plots packed full of action, suspense and some sort of battle between good and evil.
Unfortunately, many game-based movies bomb at the box office — like 2005′s Alone in the Dark, which didn’t even break the $3 million mark in its opening week — or they alienate gamers, who argue that “mainstream” films stray too far from the original games’ storylines. Meanwhile, gaming companies give up control of their content for too little reward, and bad movies can damage a franchise’s future popularity.
More after the jump.
But judging from the room full of attendees at the “How to Sell Your IP to Hollywood (Without Selling Your Soul)” panel at GDC, game developers and studio types want to keep trying — so I asked the panel’s leader, Tim Langdell, why everyone keeps investing in game-based movies, especially when they keep coming out so badly. Langdell has experience with blurring the lines between video games and all types of content: as CEO of EDGE Games, he’s overseen the development of more than 200 games, founded gaming publication Edge Magazine, and even worked on the 1997 movie The Edge, with Fox.
— How can so many movies be based on great games, and still turn out so awful? There’s this misconception that because a game is popular, the movie will be, but not every great game has a storyline that’s linear enough to turn into a movie. These movies also fail because the game studio doesn’t come to the negotiating table with a well thought-out strategy — and it’s forced to give up too much creative control. If the team can’t tell the film studio who the star should be, who’s going to write the script or what it should look like, the studio ends up with all the control, because they had to invest so much more time and money into the production.
— So how can a game studio be better prepared to make a deal? Part of it is the foresight to know that they’re making a game or franchise that might eventually function as a movie. That means having Hollywood experts involved at the start of the development process — with a screenwriter, at the very least, that can be thinking about the game in a linear fashion. There needs to be someone, or a group of people, that understand both industries, because they’re fundamentally different financially.
— What are some of the deal-breaking differences? With movies, there’s all this back-end revenue, like residual payments; an indie prodcution company can shoot a low-budget film in less than six months, shop it around, get paid by the studio for the direct sale, and then continue to collect from DVD rentals, TV licensing and now, online delivery. It doesn’t work like that in games, because most publishers need to take the money first. Even a simple game can take two years to develop, and if the company invested its own money, and a publisher doesn’t pick it up, there’s no viable alternative to recoup all that revenue. At least not yet. But as we’re moving more toward the Hollywood-style production of games, with things like episodic content, then the financing terms start to align.
Thanks you.
TMNT began life as an independent comic book, not a videogame (see first paragraph of its Wikipedia entry).
I think there's a few misconceptions here…
The reason the films are bad is because the people with money enough to buy the film rights from the game companies don't care enough about making a good film. They're interested in the IP because the game has built an audience that the studio hopes to leverage from to build a bigger film audience. They're not in it for the "art" – they just want to turn a handle and turn out a product. Why should they bother to make a good film when they know the game fans will go anyway?
If you're less cynical then the other reason is that there's a dilema between pleasing fans of the game and pleasing a regular cinema audience who's unfamilar with the game characters, plot etc. The best thing to do is just make a good film – take the characters and the theme, possibly the visual style and start again. Somehow this never happens and it's likely because too many cooks spoil the broth – too many people with interests in the film who don't agree on anything and what happens is a botched compromise of everyone's idea and no single vision. The director ends up being the fall guy for all the shit and he's possibly been working with hands tied all along.
"An indie production company can shoot as film in six weeks… and there;s all this back end revenue". LOL! In my dreams. First, the film has to get financed before any shooting begins and that can take years; when the money is available there's a massive pressure to shoot in 4 weeks – which compromises the quality of the film; and don't forget all the pre-production and post production that goes on either side of the shooting. The end-to-end gig might be a year – esp. if all the squabling & meddling is included.
Now let's look at the revenue, the producer – the guy from the indie production company that took a gamble on the game rights, paid for the script, raised the finance and made the project happen is last in line to get any cash – all that gets gobbled up by the theatres, distributors, retailers and a variety of other middlemen and leeches who add little value. I think you need to distinquish between an "indie film" and a studio film that's financed by the distributor from the outset.
My advice when you're selling the rights to anything is look who's buying and why they're buying and what they've done in the past. Then sell the rights and walk away knowing that you trust that person to deliver because you did your homework.
TMNT was a comic book, not a video game. Past that, I think you need to take a look at some of the underwhelming talent that get thrown at some of these lower budget adaptations?
Point in case: Razzie-Award Winner Uwe Boll
The not remotely respected Boll has given us
Alone in the Dark (x2)
BloodRayne (x3)
House of the Dead
In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
The movie I will be waiting for, World of Warcraft. It's been very quiet lately and i hope the idea is not scrapped.