Films based on video games are traditionally considered to be notorious failures - it's worth remembering Warcraft (2016), which turned out to be one of the most high-profile failures in the film industry. However, the situation has begun to change lately, and the last few films, such as Sonic the Hedgehog (2020) and Detective Pikachu (2019), prove that video games can be turned into films - the main be able to maintain balance. The Ringer decided to study this issue in more detail and turned to several experts, trying to understand how and why the quality of films began to grow - along with the interest in the video games themselves.
It is interesting that the film "Sonic the Hedgehog" was called by several experts at once a "turning point" for the film industry. Starting off as an outright flop, the film has been able to push ahead and become one of the most profitable video game adaptations. One of the project managers, Dmitri Johnson, spoke about this. "We all thought this project was a joke," he admitted. However, after the successful release of the film, the attitude towards it changed, and the producers increasingly "asked the question: what next?" Johnson's colleague, Mike Goldberg said that such films are "not a curse" and everything depends on the work done by the creators.
In addition to Sonic the Hedgehog, experts also mentioned the adaptation of The Witcher (2019) from Netflix, which became incredibly successful immediately after its release. As for the reasons for this success, everyone agreed - the main thing is to maintain cooperation and team spirit between the developers of the original game and the studio that creates the film. "The new generation of filmmakers knows and plays games - a big difference from what they did before," said lawyer Simon Pulman. He said that in the past few years there has not been a single case when the developers of the game did not take an active part in making the film - and this is a very good indicator.
Of course, this does not guarantee the success of future films - even productive collaboration between developers and producers will not protect films from film critics. However, taking the production of motion pictures from games more seriously is already a big step forward. Recall that work is already underway on the creation of a film based on the game "The Last of Us", where one of the developers will act as a screenwriter.
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