It appears that the games industry is about to enter a renaissance of movie and TV adaptations of popular franchises, with Detective Pikachu hopefully breaking the curse of bad on-screen adaptations of gaming's favorite icons. Many more things are on the way too, with a Just Cause movie now being adapted by John Wick writer Derek Kolstad.
Kolstad is a talented writer, with the John Wick franchise serving as a testament to his abilities to tell a gripping story with unique set pieces. What he could potentially accomplish with a franchise as over-the-top as Just Cause is exciting, to say the least. Just Cause has seen a few live action trailers in the past, though those likely won't compare to what a big budget film will be able to accomplish with the material.
The movie is set to be produced by Robert Kulzer from Constantin Films and Adrian Askarieh from Prime Universe Films, both of whom have worked on video game movies in the past. Kulzer produced the Resident Evil franchise of films and Askarieh produced the Hitman film adaptation. While those movies could easily be considered divisive, it is somewhat reassuring that the pair have experience adapting video games to the big screen.
Just Cause is hardly the first AAA game franchise to get such a treatment, though TV seems to be the chosen medium for the majority of franchises that are coming in the next few years. The Halo TV show was recently greenlit by Showtime, and Netflix's forthcoming Witcher series has been anticipated by fans for many months. How these adaptations will shake out remains to be seen, but hopefully, the long history of disappointing video game movies will finally end. There are plenty of other franchises out there that would be great to see, and maybe Kolstad will have his hands in a few more of them- depending on how Just Cause turns out.
The news comes just a day after Sony announced PlayStation Productions, a studio that will produce films based around popular PlayStation franchises. It seems that video games will soon be engrained into every form of media out there, though hopefully, they're able to shirk the mistakes of their pasts.
Source: Variety