With so many game-to-movie franchises bombing not only at the box office but with the fans, it’s hard to ignore the true reality behind the reason these types of films always seem to fail. Yes, a lot has to do with the studio making the film and the writer’s creative differences from the source material, but what sends a game-to-movie adaptation to its kill screen is the budget. If budget is the case, are game-to-movie film adaptations such as Assassin’s Creed, Ratchet & Clank, and Uncharted doomed to fail before they even begin?

Budget is what makes the world go round. Whither it’s budgeting your home finances or budgeting your spending money in order to afford a copy of Fallout 4, we all do it and as the good ole saying goes “mo money mo problems.” Truer words have never been spoken when it comes to big budget Hollywood films. We have seen this happen many times before as a great video game tries to obtain the same status as a great film. The problem here lies with the money and the film’s budget. Often while developers are working on developing a game, they have more resources strapped to their work belt compared to film productions while crafting their tale. Naughty Dog, for example, could create large-scale set pieces like the Helicopter and Train sequence from Uncharted 2, and the high-flying plane shootout from Uncharted 3. These big blockbuster-like action sequences coast a lot less to render out on a computer than for a Hollywood production to recreate the scene from scratch. Then when all is said and done they still need the power of special effects to recreate the scenes from the games. That’s about half of the production budget for the film just for a five minute scene in a hour and a half run time.



Nolan North has also recently shared some of his thoughts on the upcoming Uncharted film and a lot of what he is saying points out the major flaws in game-to-movie productions and the problems they have with transferring the experience of the game they’re based off of and capturing that same experience on a roll of film. North goes on in his interview to say “Maybe it’s because it’s such a cinematic experience in itself, but I don’t know if it’s financially feasible to make this film anymore.” This is an accurate statement; Uncharted is an expensive visionary tale as well as being coupled with an enriched action/adventure story that rivals Indiana Jones. These stories carry the player from start to finish on a non-stop action-packed thrill ride and trying to recreate that story even with the first Uncharted would still prove to be a challenging feat.

In the end, fans of these fantastic franchises would be left burned with nothing more than an unsatisfying film or god forbid a trilogy/saga of one of their favorite gaming icons making a mockery of themselves on the silver screen. Franchises like Resident Evil, Hitman, Max Payne and Prince of Persia have all tried their luck in the movie business and nine times out of ten they have all failed to hit the mark. Most, if not all, of those franchises have been met with poor reviews and lousy box office draws. Resident Evil has been the luckiest out of them all finding a foothold to latch on to as its span of films created a cult following that allowed it to have five sequels after the first installment. Even though the films fail to capture the game’s appeal and vision, it was able to create its own audience even if that audience it was not from the gaming community.



“I think the emotional investment people have with Nathan Drake is so high that it would be very difficult for them to accept somebody else – even me, with my face as Nathan Drake. They might recognize the voice, but I don’t even know if they’d accept me,” said North during the interview. This resonates with why these types of films always seem to do poorly. Not only do they stray far away from the original source material and change aspects of the characters we have grown to love, but fans have such an emotional investment in these stories that when they are lost in translation, it always ends in turmoil. Films such as Ratchet and Clank and Sly Cooper, however, stand a better chance in the market due to their similarities to their games. These two films are taking a different approach to the games-to-movies business and are cutting out the middleman and going about capturing the magic of the game. Even though we know very little about these films, when the trailers for them went up around the web, longtime fans of these franchises it felt as if they were transported into these universes.

So why is it different from other game adaptations? Simply because they have a leg up in the game; these franchises were cartoony to begin with so transferring from a game to a movie is as simple as just cutting out the gameplay and replacing it with extra long cutscenes. That’s not to say that the upcoming Fassbender Assassin’s Creed installment won’t be good; Ubisoft has a better shot than anyone in creating a good adaptation of their games, because they have the privilege of the franchise not being owned by Sony along with operating within their own production company.

Regardless of the logistics of these adaptations, it all goes back to the only thing that matters in order to make these franchises even worth debating and worrying over: the fans. Without the fans of these games, none of these adaptations would exist in the first place and the cinematic world would be missing out on the gaming world. As North has already stated, fans do not want an Uncharted movie, whether it is because of recent films like the Hitman reboot flopping or the controversy of Amy Pascal’s deep involvement with the film and the Sony emails leak revealing just how bad the film could possibly turn out