9 Video Game Movies in the Works: Ranking Their Prospects
‘Fruit Ninja’ (Halfbrick Studios)
Video games are making a big play for the movie box office in 2016-17. Ratchet & Clank got the ball rolling in late April, followed by Angry Birds, which flew right to the top of the weekend box office with a $39 million debut. Those two films, however, are merely sticking their toes in the water while a wave of interactive favorites — even Tetris?! — line up behind them to test their brands on the big screen.
Setting aside many projects still mired in rumorville (Shadow of the Colossus, Gran Turismo, a Tom Hardy-led Splinter Cell), which of the forthcoming console-to-cinema translations look like winners? Here’s how we size up the odds, from least interesting to most exciting.
9. Tetris (release date: TBA)
There may be no more popular video game than Tetris. And there may also be no game less suited for a movie adaptation than the beloved block-arranging strategy title, which has no story, characters, or any other element necessary for a narrative feature. Nonetheless, according to a Cannes Film Festival announcement by producers Larry Kasanoff and Bruno Wu, a trilogy — yes, a trilogy! — of Tetris films will begin production in China in 2017. Color us skeptical.
8. Fruit Ninja (release date: TBA)
A mobile game in which you swipe your finger to chop up food, Fruit Ninja is the second most popular iOS title ever, so it’s no surprise someone would step up to try to extend it into a movie brand. Like Tetris, its premise doesn’t naturally lend itself to a film experience, but producers Sam White and Tara Farney (and screenwriters J.P. Lavin and Chad Damiani) apparently believe otherwise. To us, it’s a plan that so far seems, ahem, dicey.
7. Sly Cooper (release date: 2016)
Based on Sony’s hit platforming series, Sly Cooper is a raccoon bandit who discovers that he actually hails from a line of infamous thieves — thus propelling him on an adventure alongside his trusty companions Bentley the Turtle and Murray the Hippo. While only a single trailer has to this point emerged (watch it below), the film, directed by Kevin Murnoe, remains set for a 2016 release, and it has the makings of a modest action-oriented, attitude-heavy CG-animated hit.
Watch the ‘Sly Cooper’ trailer:
6. Warcraft (release date: June 10)
Director Duncan Jones (Moon, Source Code) delivers the massively multiplayer online role-playing game to theaters next month. Early trailers suggest that it’ll be an epic tale cast in a familiar Avatar-ish mold — one in which humans and orcs strike up an uneasy alliance in order to fight a common foe (and stave off threat of extinction). The jury remains out on whether anyone other than die-hard franchise fans will warm to this CG-heavy fantasy, but it does seem like the sort of larger-than-life digitized adventure that’s tailor made for summer.
Watch the ‘Warcraft’ trailer:
5. Minecraft (release date: 2017)
Given that it’s being shepherded to the screen by Roy Lee, the producer behind The LEGO Movie, we’d have to take the prospects for the pixelated building-crazy series at the multiplex seriously, even if details are somewhat scarce. While we don’t know how it will make the jump to the movie realm, we do know who will be guiding Its transition: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star Rob McElhnney is writing and directing, with input from the game’s developer, Mojang.
4. Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (release date: Jan. 19, 2017)
Milla Jovovich has made a career out of playing zombie-slaying superheroine Alice, and she’ll embark on one last quest to stop the undead from conquering the world — her sixth Resident Evil film since 2002 — next January. No matter our skepticism that this is truly the lucrative franchise’s end, this latest installment from Paul W.S. Anderson — the fourth film in the franchise he’s directed — should deliver healthy doses of stylishly ultraviolent horror-sci-fi mayhem.
3. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider reboot (release date: 2017)
After two so-so movie adaptations featuring Angelina Jolie as buxom Indiana Jones-ish globe-trotter Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider series went into extended cinematic hibernation. It’s now been awakened, with Oscar winner Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl ) as Croft, making it a reboot of considerable A-list stature. No other talent has been announced just yet, but with Vikander aboard, it’s easily one of 2017’s most anticipated action films.
2. Assassin’s Creed (release date: Dec. 21)
Michael Fassbender takes on the role of a criminal who — through a crazy turn of sci-fi events — relives the memories of his fallen hired-killer ancestors in Assassin’s Creed, director Justin Kurzel’s lavish adaptation of Ubisoft’s video game series. As the first trailer makes clear (watch it below), the film will be a big-budget barrage of period-piece combat and stealth-based action, with Fassbender scaling walls and running along rooftops in a manner faithful to his digital predecessors. Hopes are high it’ll be one of the holiday season’s big hits.
Watch the ‘Assassin’s Creed’ trailer:
1. Rampage (release date: TBA)
The Rock (a.k.a., Dwayne Johnson) already beat the living daylights out of a titanic earthquake in last summer’s San Andreas, so the odds of him proving victorious in a blockbuster showdown against city-destroying monsters seems preordained — making his adaptation of the ‘80s arcade classic Rampage our pick as the future video game adaptation to watch.
Four reasons video game film adaptations may one day be as big as comic-book movies:
