Video game movies have a pretty lousy track record when it comes to quality, but it may not be that way forever. Speaking today at the DICE Summit, two veteran movie producers, Roy Lee (The Departed, The Lego Movie) and Adrian Askarieh (Hitman, Agent 47), talked about what it will take for video game movies to come out better in the future.For his part, Lee stressed that working with the development team is important. Some changes will probably need to be made to adapt a game for the big-screen, but if the filmmaking process is a collaborative effort between the film producers and game-makers, the end result stands to benefit.
"It takes a balance to make sure that you appeal to a wide audience that has never played the game," Lee said. "T
he way I've done it is to include the original IP holders in the creation of the movie itself, so that you make sure that you have everything you can that appeals to the core gamer [while also helping them] accept the changes that are required to make it into a movie."
Askarieh added that he believes the number one problem with video game movies today is that in some cases, the original game developers are not involved. He cited Marvel as an example for how much better a production can be when the right minds come together.
"I would say that is the number one problem with video game based movies. The biggest problem is not having the creators involved," he explained. "Marvel became Marvel once they started creating their own movies. I think the way to do video game movies is, number one, have filmmakers that are
passi
onate about them and know them; they're fans, they're not just looking at it as a job. And also have developers and publishers involved."
Askarieh produced last summer's Hitman movie Agent 47, which was one of the worst-reviewed video game movies of all time. It is unclear if the team at IO Interactive was involved in the production, but it doesn't sound like it from what Askarieh said today.
No comments:
Post a Comment