Where Do Video Game Adaptations Go From Here?

While video game adaptations have been on a steady resurgence for some time, 2024 may have been one of the busiest years yet. Prime Video boasted Fallout, Like a Dragon, and Secret Level while Netflix touted Arcane’s final season and Tomb Raider: Legend of Lara Croft. Sonic 3 is currently killing it in theaters, and Borderlands…well, it came out. And that’s just the high-profile stuff: you might’ve forgotten or not known that Dead Cells got an animated series over in France, or that Paramount put out a show for Ark: Survival Evolved, which was surprisingly fun.

It’s safe to say that Hollywood is now hoping video games can become a new profit driver, especially since some of these shows have picked up major award nominations and wins and 2023’s Mario movie made over $1 billion in theaters. In fact, Mario‘s success led some to wonder if game adaptations would replace superhero movies as the new hotness, which seemed to be losing their shine prior to Deadpool & Wolverine this past summer. Like how 2025 will test if superheroes are truly back, video games have some heavy hitters that may determine how things go these next few years: at time of writing, we know to expect the Devil May Cry adaptation and new seasons for The Last of Us and Castlevania: Nocturne, plus Minecraft, Mortal Kombat 2, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, and Until Dawn on the big screen. Other previously announced adaptations for Watch Dogs, Among Us, and whatever else are currently TBD, if they even still exist at all.

In some ways, things haven’t changed; go back a decade or two, and you’ll find plenty of games had movies or TV shows announced that ultimately never went anywhere. (Case in point, we learned in November a movie based on the Splinter Cell games—first announced waaaaaaaay back in 2005—was dead.) There’s always a chance Netflix doesn’t make those Gears of War or BioShock movies it previously announced, ditto Capcom’s Street Fighter film, and so on, since that’s just how things roll sometimes. But what might give this new resurgence of game adaptations a better overall chance is several developers being more involved this time around; Nintendo actively had a hand in the Mario movie and its upcoming Legend of Zelda film, Capcom basically pitched Devil May Cry to that show’s executive producer Adi Shankar, and Naughty Dog’s studio head Neil Druckmann directed and wrote several episodes of the Last of Us series. Having the developers in the kitchen isn’t essential, but as Riot Games’ guiding hand for Arcane showed, it can be an extra sell to fans of those games to know the creatives behind them aren’t just sitting back and cashing a check.

Another way in which game adaptations have changed? Many games are tangibly benefitting from these hitting the small or silver screen. Both Fallout and Last of Us famously saw spikes in sales and player numbers after their respective jumps to a new medium, and even Borderlands benefitted, despite its movie being a massive non-starter. Not every developer has been entirely forthcoming as to the impact of these expansions, but what results there are show everybody can win from this. It’s something game publishers have picked on up—Shadow Generations got a DLC pack featuring Keanu Reeves voicing the antihero hedgehog as he does in Sonic 3, and Epic Games put out character skins for Unreal Tournament in Fortnite ahead of the long-dormant shooter’s episode in Secret Level.

Making games takes a lot of time nowadays, and as the number of game adaptations grow, both will end up playing off the other. Some Secret Level episodes focused on games that had either recently come out or won’t be out for another few years; its divisive, sci-fi horror-themed episode for Pac-Man ended up being a surprise lead-in for next year’s action-adventure title Shadow Labyrinth. Back in October, Sony released a remake for Until Dawn that seemed to fizzle in sales, but will likely gain more traction when its movie hits in April 2025 (or whenever it gets its first trailer). By that same token, it’s easy to imagine Naughty Dog spent the last five years remaking the two Last of Us games so viewers of the show would fork over $60 or $70 to see how Ellie and Joel’s stories played out (and differ) in video game form. And knowing Nintendo, it probably doesn’t have a Mario game or three explicitly made to coincide with 2026’s Mario movie, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have those on hand, right?

As is the case with superhero movies, game adaptations will go through a trial and error period as developers and Hollywood try to find some kind of happy place. It won’t be without without its losses—right now, it’s not entirely clear if Riot will get to make good on its promise of Arcane follow-ups, and it’s equally telling that Castlevania: Nocturne directors Sam and Adam Deats have explicitly called on fans to watch season two next year as the crew waits to find out if they’ve been renewed. Both the game and film/TV industries have been notably quick to bet big, and in several cases, came up shorter than they (or anyone) could’ve anticipated. We’ll just have to wait and see how things play out—here’s hoping such a collapse of the games-to-TV/film pipeline doesn’t take either the developer or film studio with it.

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