Hollywood's Gaming Boom
- Christopher Carr
- Feb 6
- 5 min read
Last month saw quite a bit of news in the world of video game adaptations. Sophie Turner’s first look as Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider film, a casting reveal for Kratos in God of War, and a Fallout reality show was announced. In fact, the past few years have seen remarkable success for video game adaptations, with Sonic the Hedgehog films, HBO’s The Last of Us, and the Super Mario Bros. movie. Adapting other works for film is as old as cinema itself, yet conventional wisdom in the 2000s was that video game movies were doomed to fail, going so far as to label it a curse. Today’s boom in video game movies implies the curse is seemingly lifted, which begs the question: What’s changed?
The most immediate change was the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s dominance. Marvel Studios held a virtual monopoly on action films during the 2010s, choking out any unfortunate film that competed. That’s not to say other blockbusters weren’t successful during this time, but more often than not Marvel dominated the box office. Since Avengers: Endgame and the COVID-19 pandemic, which was a huge blow to cinema as a whole, the MCU has struggled to retain audiences’ attention in the way they once did. Hollywood started looking for their next big thing, and have seemingly found it with video game adaptations, and it’s easy to see why. Video games are the most valuable form of entertainment in the United States at the moment, having an estimated market value of almost 300 billion dollars in 2024. Hollywood is betting players will attend theaters to see their favorite video games brought to life, and the bet has paid off. The three Sonic the Hedgehog movies have collectively grossed 575 million dollars, and 2023’s Super Mario Bros. Movie 1.3 billion dollars. If the dominance of comic book movies in the 2010s proved anything, it’s that loyal fanbases are the most marketable audiences, and that they will go see more of what they’re already familiar with.
Another major force contributing to the boom in video game adaptations is time. While many of these games, such as Tomb Raider, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Mario have been around for decades, the filmmakers today are of age where they would have likely played them in childhood, and want to see that brought to the big screen. This goes for most other adaptations as well, even the newer titles such as Five Nights at Freddies, Minecraft, or The Last of Us, which have resonated with different audiences for different reasons, but are still nonetheless being made by people who’ve enjoyed the games. It makes sense that modern filmmakers would be inspired by games in their childhoods, and it’s a sign of changing times. To end the discussion there would be good enough, as those are all fairly solid explanations, but I’m not entirely convinced. Instead, I think Hollywood sees video game adaptations as a survival path for the coming years.
As mentioned before, COVID decimated cinema, and theater attendance is not what it once was. Instead, audiences prefer streaming to going out and Hollywood has adapted to this, incorporating steaming into the business model. While I have no doubt they would prefer us all to stay home, total abandonment of theaters leaves money on the table. There’s only so much to spend monthly on monthly streaming subscriptions. Hollywood finds itself in a catch-22: Loyal fanbases are the most valuable customers, but audiences want to see something new, and when the new thing blows up, it does huge numbers. Video game adaptations are apparently the solution. They are old and big enough to have loyal fanbases to market towards, but not so old as to feel trite and overdone. The characters being adapted range from blank slate to three dimensional, giving more creative freedom to filmmakers, and because video games themselves aren’t dominated by any one given franchise, there’s a deeper well to draw from than comic books, which have two titans and many smaller players competing.
The well however will run dry. The very nature of a boom means a bust will follow. Either the market will become oversaturated and there’s a string of failures, or new technologies or world events will shift the economics away from video game movies towards something else, and the search for the next hot property will continue will continue in about a decade or so. To some extent, this isn’t too concerning as genres have gone in and out of fashion, and video game movies are just the next evolution of this. On the other hand, the continuous search for a new hot topic as the old one goes under seems unsustainable, so what’s the solution? Audiences have shown they’re willing to take a risk and watch something original, but there is again the problem of original ideas are risky and the profit incentive of Hollywood is not as likely to take them on compared to whatever’s in vogue.
Perhaps the solution lies within the gaming industry. There’s a wider diversity in what games get made, due jointly by the lower entry barrier and the size of the industry, making it difficult to move in any one direction. Neither of these are directly transferrable to cinema, but the lessons are applicable. While Hollywood is going international with production, smaller cities like Denver, New Orleans, Dallas, and Atlanta are all seeing thriving independent film scenes. This adds needed diversity to filmmaking, opening up more opportunities to aspiring filmmakers who may not have the fortune or luxury of living in the country’s two largest cities. This brings a wide pool of talent and stories to tell, and that means a greater chance at something never before seen. Whether these locations have staying power is up in the air, but the possibility remains exciting, and I for one look forward to what comes from this new pool of filmmaking.
Whatever the future may hold, there’s no question filmmaking has reached an inflection point. The industry is reshuffling to account for the expensive mergers and reduced theater attendance, and it only makes sense to adopt new strategies. I’m excited for this boom in video game adaptations, but I fear it may be more of the same. It risks regurgitating reskinned, tired tropes and cliches at audiences who have increasingly grown wise to such tricks and want something new. This gap can be filled by a diversifying independent cinema, but by the very nature of independent cinema’s limited resources, it can only fill so much. Hollywood doesn’t seem intent on filling in the rest, but instead digging new holes. In such a case, they’re dooming themselves to reloading the same problems once again.
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