Why Are Video Game Adaptations Good Now? | Spot On
From the moment Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo slid into their matching overalls and unleashed Super Mario Bros. on to the world back in 1993, video game fans have wondered: can video game adaptations ever be… good? For years, it seemed as if the answer was a resounding no. While some films were decent, the vast majority left a lot to be desired–such as good dialogue and storylines that, you know, made sense. Recently, however, everything has changed.
In the past few years, Netflix has earned not only financial success but critical-acclaim with its television adaptations of Castlevania, Arkane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and The Witcher. Just last year, HBO delivered a The Last of Us adaptation worthy of the coveted “prestige tv” status, while Amazon Prime’s Fallout series has already left fans eager for its next season. And it’s not just video game-related television shows that are finding success. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the second-highest grossing film of 2023, surpassing Oppenheimer and every super hero movie released that year.
So, what happened that made video game movies, well, good? And more importantly, what does all this mean going forward? Tam and Lucy discuss the game-to-film pipeline, what’s changed, and how this movement is fantastic for indie games with interesting narratives–such as El Paso, Elsewhere and Dredge–which now have movie deals of their own.
Spot On is a weekly news show airing Fridays in which GameSpot’s managing editor Tamoor Hussain and senior producer Lucy James talk about the latest news in games. Given the highly dynamic and never-ending news cycle of the massive video game industry, there’s always something to talk about but, unlike most other news shows, Spot On will dive deep into a single topic as opposed to recapping all the news. Spot On airs each Friday.
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A Fallout: New Vegas Player Is Trying To Raise $500,000 To Display Mr. House’s Face On The Vegas Sphere
A Fallout: New Vegas mega-fan is attempting to raise $500,000 in the hopes of bringing a taste of the Mojave Wasteland to current-day Las Vegas.
Fallout franchise fan Evan Zarsaz started a GoFundMe campaign earlier this week with the goal of obtaining enough cash to put the face of New Vegas’s enigmatic ruler on the real-life Las Vegas Sphere for a day.
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“Let’s get down to business,” the fundraiser’s description reads. “As the sole proprietor of the Las Vegas Strip, it’s only right that Mr. Robert House of RobCo Industries makes his presence known in the crown jewel of the Mojave.”
The cost to do so–half a million dollars–is quite pricey, but the Las Vegas Sphere is typically used for advertisements, and it would seem the Sphere’s accounting department doesn’t take Bottle Caps in lieu of cash. Progress has been slow–in the two days since the GoFundMe campaign was launched, 38 donors have raised a total of only $380 USD. Still, we’re sure Mr. House would be flattered by the gesture, and it seems like Zarsaz’s fellow Fallout fans firmly support his fundraising goals, with some making mockups of what the Sphere would look like if the fundraiser were to succeed.
Interest in the Fallout franchise has spiked after Amazon Prime Video released the first season of its highly rated Fallout television series, which is available to stream now. The events of Season 1–which features a brief scene in which Mr. House appears–seem to suggest Season 2 could take things to New Vegas.
Next Jurassic World Movie From Star Wars Director May Have Found Another Star
A new Jurassic World movie is in the works, and now another lead may have been found. Deadline reports that the star of Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, is in talks to star in the new dinosaur movie alongside Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey.
Gareth Edwards, who directed the Star Wars movie Rogue One, is directing the new Jurassic World film. The movie is set for release on July 2, 2025, and Jurassic Park’s David Koepp is penning the script.
Garcia-Rulfo found breakout success with Netflix’s The Lincoln Lawyer. The show is now coming back for a third season, but a release date hasn’t been announced yet.
Jurassic Park, which was based on the 1990 Michael Crichton novel, premiered in 1993 with Steven Spielberg directing. Spielberg came back to direct 1997’s The Lost World, with Joe Johnston stepping in to direct 2001’s Jurassic Park III. Universal brought the series back in 2015 with Jurassic World, which was followed by Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Dominion (2022).
Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard starred in the Jurassic World movies, but they’re not expected to come back for the next one. Also not lined up to appear are the original trilogy’s stars, including Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and Laura Dern.
Steven Spielberg, the mastermind behind the original Jurassic Park, will serve as executive producer on the Jurassic World movie.
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes Stars Say Those Mo-Cap Suits Were Actually “Liberating”
The modern version of the Planet of the Apes franchise has introduced to Hollywood a fascinating new sort of production–one in which nearly every character is a non-human CGI creation played by an actor in a performance-capture suit. It’s a lot even in this age of CGI soundstages. For the actors who played those ape roles, it was unlike anything they’d ever done before. But as several of those actors told me as part of the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes press tour, it turned out that wasn’t a bad thing.
“It’s not you on the screen, so you don’t have to worry about what you look like, or anything like that,” said Owen Teague, who plays the main protagonist ape, Noa. “It becomes about purely the character, and playing the character. You can disappear fully, which I think is what I always want in playing a character. I’m always looking to kind of shed myself, but you don’t often get to fully do that, because you still look like you to a certain degree, you’re still moving like you and talking like you.”
Kevin Durand, who plays the villain, Proximus Caesar, echoed that sentiment.
“Honestly, I thought that I would be restricted by the parameters of the technology, and it actually ended up being the complete opposite,” Durand told me. “When I play humans, which is most of the time, I sometimes feel I have to fight my human vanity at times. No matter what character I’m playing, I have to fight against this idea of, like, ‘Oh, I don’t think I look good on that angle.’ We all wake up in the morning, we look in the mirror, we have days where we’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, how are you doing?’ Or we’re like, ‘Oh, God, really?’ We all have that. And I never once thought about the fact that I was wearing this spandex suit, and had this helmet on with the camera. It was all about connection, it was all about intention. We were, luckily, very well equipped.”
A big part of Durand’s comfort was the result of the cast’s time at what he called “ape school,” where they learned both how to perform using the mannerisms of an ape and how to deal with the mo-cap gear they had to wear.
“By the time we began shooting, and saying the lines that were written, we’re already versed in a particular physical vocabulary, and like our relationships are built,” said Peter Macon, who plays the orangutan Raka. “So then you can ignore, practically, or just forget about the fact that we’re wearing this equipment that we need to wear.”
And that, Durand said, was key.
“The way that we were prepped was that they got us to a point where, at least for me, physically, like I could turn off Kevin, and bring in Proximus,” Durand said, switching to his Proximus voice for that last part. “And then it just came to life. And then within that, okay, what does he want? What does he need?”
There were some drawbacks to this method, though–for folks who played the apes, and especially for the actor who has to play the only main human character. Macon, for one, said that while the process was “liberating,” it took some effort to trust the CGI artists with his performance.
“What was troubling was that I felt like I had limited participation in how I could help the process,” Macon said, indicating it was tough to make changes from take to take without really knowing how Raka would look. “Like, if I know what my face is going to be looking like as an orangutan, perhaps I can adjust my performance or what I’m doing to better serve the mission and not being able to have access to that…gotta let it go.”
“We were in great hands,” Durand chimed in. “WETA, they truly honored the work that we did, because we can very, very specifically see who’s who and like, all I see is Travis [Jeffrey] and I see Lydia [Peckham] and Owen [Teague], and I see Peter. I see my friends up there.”
And while Freya Allen, who plays the human Mae, is used to dealing with CGI environments and creatures thanks to her time playing Ciri on The Witcher show, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes had a whole other challenge in store for her.
“I’ve had to do a lot of imagining things before, you know, monsters and everything like that. But I’ve never had to play out a whole scene and a whole conversation with nobody there,” Allen said. “I’d do the scenes with them, and then they’d be taken out, and I’d do the scene on my own. And so that was definitely something I’ve never done in that way, having a conversation with the air.”
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is in movie theaters now.
EA Sports College Football 25 Cover Leaks Early, Full Reveal Coming Next Week
EA’s first college football video game in 10 years is almost here, and its cover has been leaked early thanks to a digital storefront.
Over on the PlayStation Network Store, the page listing of EA Sports College Football 25 appeared, along with the deluxe edition cover. The three prominent athletes on the cover are University of Michigan’s Donovan Edwards in the center, University of Texas’s Quinn Ewers on the left, and University of Colorado’s Travis Hunter on the right.
According to the listing, the game has 134 FBS schools. One additional leaked screenshot shows that University of Notre Dame will be included in the roster. EA Sports College Football 25 will also support microtransactions in the form of virtual currency and in-game items.
There will be a full reveal for the game on May 16. The game is due out later this year on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
The NCAA is not involved with EA Sports College Football, which is why the cover is missing the name and branding. Thanks to name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals, student athletes in college can now make money.
Last year, the College Football Players Association told others to boycott the game due players being offered low payment, which was reportedly around $500. The Brandr Group also sued EA, since the former has deals to negotiate group licensing contracts for 54 NCAA Division I schools.
Legend Of Zelda Is “Dying For A Cinematic Treatment,” Director Says
Nintendo is teaming up with Sony and Marvel producer Avi Arad for a live-action The Legend of Zelda movie. Director Wes Ball recently told Variety that Zelda is one of the last “untapped properties” that is ripe for a movie and that he’s excited to get to work on the film.
“I can’t say a lot about it, but Zelda is hugely important to me. It’s up there with Star Wars for me in terms of what shaped me as a kid,” Ball said. “Talking about adventure? That’s the thing. It’s like one of the last untapped properties that is dying for a cinematic treatment. But we’ll see what happens.”
Zelda has a dedicated and passionate fanbase, and Ball knows something about that having previously directed the Maze Runner movies. He said he got a “taste” of the “expectation game” with those films, and now he’s feeling it again directing Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. For Zelda, though, he might be facing the highest expectations of his career.
“Obviously you can’t have that while you’re making a thousand decisions a day. You ingest it and hopefully you make good choices along the way in a string of thousands and thousands of choices that you make,” he said. “And so I count myself as a gigantic fan, and I trust that in a way as we move forward, and hopefully it lines up with other people that want to see the same thing.”
Ball was recently asked what his favorite Zelda game of all time is. He diplomatically and strategically chose to not reply, as doing so might have led the fanbase to conclusions about the film.
Ball recently talked about lessons he’s applying to his upcoming Zelda movie. Additionally, the director has previously expressed that the film has “got to feel like something real.” This comes after Ball mentioned swinging for live-action Hayao Miyazaki aesthetics, known for co-founding Studio Ghibli.
There is no release date yet for the Zelda movie, nor have any casting announcements been made yet. Meanwhile, Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes premieres in theaters today, May 10. For more, check out GameSpot’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes review.
In other Nintendo news, a Switch 2 console–or whatever it may be called–is in the works and could launch in 2025. For more, check out everything we know about Switch 2.
The Rogue Prince Of Persia Has Been Slightly Delayed, Thanks Partly To Hades 2
Prince of Persia fans will have to wait a little longer for the next spin-off to arrive, as Evil Empire has announced that The Rogue Prince of Persia has been slightly delayed beyond its planned May 14 release date. This is partly due to the Dead Cells developer working on polishing up lingering bugs ahead of the game’s early-access launch and the studio aiming to avoid being overshadowed by Hades 2. The Hades sequel also launched in early access this month, and so far, the game has had a strong debut. Evil Empire says it will announce a new release date for The Rogue Prince of Persia on May 13.
“Seeing as everyone and their mum is playing that game–including our entire team…and their mums–we have decided to let people have their fun with it before we release The Rogue Prince of Persia,” Evil Empire said in a statement. “While we have every confidence in The Rogue Prince of Persia, it’s not every day that a game in the same genre as you, which is one of the most anticipated upcoming games of 2024, will release into Early Access a week before you plan to do the same. We are not prideful enough to ignore the implications of that, and we truly believe that this short delay is the best decision for us and our Early Access journey. We also want to give Hades 2 a head start before we start running, it’s only fair.”
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Evil Empire even broke the news with a yellow background on its social media post, a running trend that Cyberpunk 2077 fans are painfully familiar with. The studio says it’ll use the extra time to fine-tune its day-one patch and “add more stuff” before launch. “We completely understand that this is annoying news to hear for everyone who was eager to play the game, especially so close to the anticipated release. We can only hold our hands up, apologize, and hope that you understand,” Evil Empire added.
The Rogue Prince of Persia is the second spin-off releasing this year in the franchise, following the launch of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown in January. This new game is a 2D action-platformer in a similar vein to Dead Cells, and features wall-running elements that players will utilize to navigate through procedurally generated levels. There’ll also be a chunky arsenal of weapons to master, like axes, swords, and daggers, while secondary weapon options include shields and grappling hooks.