Why Movies? Games Would Make Better TV Series

Culture, Discussion, Gaming, Movies & TV , , , 0 Comment

Every month it seems, there’s articles and rumors popping up of Game X becoming a feature film. A studio wants to take a game, most of which take dozens of hours to complete, and water down the story and content to make 2 hour Hollywood feature film.

Halo, Metroid, Uncharted, BioShock, God of War, Assassin’s Creed, etc. are just a few of the most well known gaming franchises that Hollywood has shown interest turning into films, all of which have been canned, are still up in the air or are urban myths that are mentioned in interviews.

This is simply the wrong way to go. Why butcher these franchises into films that have to meet a time requirement of 2, maybe 3 hours? Not only will you piss off the fans of the series, it’s just a crappy way to represent what could easily (and more suitably) translate into not a film, but a television series.

The Walking Dead, Spartacus, Falling Skies and many other network and movie channel original series perform great in attracting viewers, maintaining a fanbase and telling a story over the course of 10 to 15 episodes and expand it and (eventually) finish it with seasons.

Take The Walking Dead, for example: It’s got a loyal fanbase, people talk about it often and it’s a ratings hit for AMC. It’s even carried over into the video game realm to critical acclaim thanks to Telltale Games. Keeping that in mind, one could reverse that concept and turn say BioShock or Assassin’s Creed into a hit television series, which I’m sure that if either one were to, would be far more successful than a one-time film adaptation that was made for the sake of being made due to it being “the cool thing at the time”.

All of that said, I’m not saying that a film wouldn’t work, it’s just bad to take a game that takes hours to complete, has hours of story and content and transform it into a film that will be missing crucial development, plot points, etc. where a TV series could easily flesh the concept out in a way more conventional fashion.

Agree? Disagree? What game would make a good TV series? Could it be detailed and fleshed out better that way as opposed to film? Fire off your opinions below.

Hongo

Whatcha got under the foil, Mr. Party Pooper? Some party poop?

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