Successful video game movies can be pretty rare. There’s plenty of IPs that were given a live-action movie adaptation where the film creators and developers only saw mediocre to poor scores from critics and viewers. However, as of late, there has been a resurgence in an attempt to bring out new successful video game based films, such as Warcraft and the upcoming Assassin’s Creed movie.
With that said, developers and publishers have been protective over their longstanding successful IPs. For the most part, it seems that there is a hesitation for these IP owners to sign off on a live-action video game movie adaptation simply because of the damage that might occur from a poorly received film.
Regardless, there are still some developers that would like to see a successful film adaptation from their IP, such as Bethesda. The development team is behind some incredibly popular franchises such as Fallout and The Elder Scrolls series, but what would it take for a movie adaptation to happen?
Pete Hines, Bethesda’s vice president of public relations and marketing, recently was interviewed by Finder. During the interview, the topic of video game films was brought up where Pete Hines made mention of the lack of interest simply because the developers normally don’t have full control.
“Even when they say, “oh no, you will have total control,” well, I don’t know anybody who actually has total control over the film adaptation of their video game. If you did, why would you not just make it yourself? Of course the film studio and the scriptwriter and the director are going to have a tonne of say. They will have their own vision. So we get asked all the time, but we see it as a distraction. We’re a video games company; let’s do what we know.”
With that said, the idea of making a film is not completely out of the question. There is one director who Pete Hines admits would create a serious conversation that the development team would listen to.
“I think if Peter Jackson turned up at Todd Howard’s office and said, “I want to do Elder Scrolls,” well that would be a pretty serious conversation you would have to listen to. But I think Peter is probably pretty busy (laughs). So I don’t see us any time soon looking at movies. And if you look at our board of directors, we have Hollywood heavyweights like Jerry Bruckheimer, Leslie Moonves and Harry Sloan, so it’s not like we don’t know where to go if we want to get a film or TV show made. It’s more about, “is this something we really want to do? What are we getting out of it? What kind of distraction is it going to create?”
Right now it seems that the development team doesn’t necessarily want a movie adaptation at the moment. However, if the right person came into the office showing interest, it could sway the developer’s opinion on the matter.
