Online game variations proceed to make a giant splash in Hollywood. A Minecraft Film has earned over $900 million throughout theaters worldwide. Season two of HBO’s The Final of Us garnered rave evaluations, with a 3rd season within the works. And extra gaming-based movies and TV exhibits — together with the second season of Amazon’s Fallout and a sequel to The Tremendous Mario Bros. Film — are on the best way.
In response to the Hollywood and Video games discuss at GamesBeat Summit 2025 in Los Angeles, one factor that every one these profitable variations share is a dedication to authenticity. They seize the spirit of the franchise they’re primarily based on and took time to grasp what made these video games so particular within the first place.
“I think the thing that the top movies have done well is actually listening to the fan base,” mentioned Baobab Studios CEO Maureen Fan on the panel. “In Hollywood, there’s this [attitude of], ‘I’m the creative, I know best.’ And I feel like the reasons why these top movies did well is they actually listened.”
A part of this entails bringing folks in for focus teams, but it surely’s additionally vital to usually discuss to the unique creators, too. When engaged on variations of online game IP, Fan and her workforce meet with builders on a month-to-month foundation to verify in and ask how their audiences would really feel in regards to the undertaking.
Selection’s analysis information on the top-grossing video game-based movies.
“My background is user experience research, so I really value that [process]. But that’s really something that my team has had to learn,” mentioned Fan. “My co-founder directed all the Madagascar films. My co-chief creative officer was the sole producer of Moana. So they come from this world that’s very much ‘I know better.’ But over the last however many years we’ve been around, they’ve now got to the point where they’re craving that data. They want to talk to the audience, especially when you’re doing Gen Z stuff and you’re of a different generation.”
One other issue is the expertise behind the digicam. Whereas film and TV corporations appear to be in an arms race over chasing huge gaming IP, Alcon Interactive president George Collins thinks it’ll turn into more and more vital to pair these properties with the fitting administrators and writers, particularly those that have a novel perspective or who can say one thing new with the model.
“If you think about things like Greta Gerwig doing Barbie, or [Phil] Lord and [Christopher] Miller doing Lego — those could have been really corny, awful movies,” mentioned Collins. “But because they really had a [specific] idea, they took it in directions you wouldn’t have expected. That’s what made them good.”
However as profitable as this current slate of movies and TV exhibits have been, there are nonetheless lots of huge names on the market like Name of Obligation and Grand Theft Auto that haven’t made the leap to Hollywood simply but. For Dan Prigg, head of Skydance Interactive, one of many main causes for that has to do with value.
“You’re not going to get Grand Theft Auto for anything cheap these days, and that’s just for the licensing fee, right?,” mentioned Prigg. “And then you throw in the actual production value that you would have to input to match the level of expectation I think the audience [would have] — people would just look at the spreadsheet and be like ‘Nope, that’s a huge risk.’ It could be a huge hit, but it’s also a huge risk.”
Collins famous {that a} Name of Obligation film specifically has been floating round Hollywood for a short while, however the difficulty is much less about value and extra about discovering the fitting script and story.
“I think it’s more like you have to get a script, either a pilot or a theatrical script, that you believe in,” mentioned Collins. “You have to be able to attach people that you know can really make a good film or a good TV show, a good showrunner. And that isn’t as easy as you think.”
With out the fitting expertise and story behind a undertaking, you threat damaging not solely the film’s model, but additionally the repute of the sport and of the developer. Again when Fan was VP of video games at Zynga, she recalled how the success of Farmville attracted somebody from Hollywood who wished to make a Farmville TV present. She mentioned no on the time, arguing that the sport was already making some huge cash and didn’t wish to threat damaging its repute.
“There’s a lot of downsides because if someone makes a crappy adaptation, they’re going to screw up my brand and jeopardize my main revenue stream or upset my audience members, my players, right? I have to really trust that I believe in this director, I believe in this script, for me to do it,” mentioned Fan.
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