For years, Hollywood has been churning out game to film adaptations like there’s no tomorrow. Most have failed to capture the audience’s imagination. A lot of the problems with these adaptations have been the challenge of turning games with 40+ gaming hours into a two-hour film.
Recently, games like The Last of Us have gone down a different route of creating a serialized television series based on the source material, with more success. There are many more games that could go down this route with similar success. Here are some video games that would make great TV shows, updated by Callum Murray.
10 Grand Theft Auto 5
The television landscape is full of crime drama’s, some better than others, but it’s a proven popular genre that brings in the viewers. Grand Theft Auto 5 is a game that has provided countless amounts of explosive action and brilliant storylines.
Grand Theft Auto 5 stands out as the one entry in the series most capable of making the transition from game to television series. It has a built-in audience who would happily swap their game consoles for their tv controls to see the action unfold with a great cast and big budget visuals. It’s surprising it hasn’t already made the leap to television’s screens.
9 Mafia Trilogy
Ever since The Sopranos hit screens way back in 1999, television audiences have been obsessed with the gangster genre. When the show ended, fans saw a slew of mob related drama’s follow it onto screens, most notably Boardwalk Empire which introduced the early days of the mob. The Mafia Trilogy charts it all from the golden era of the mob to its eventual downfall.
The thought of big budget sprawling television series based on the popular Mafia Trilogy is enough to whet the appetite of any fan of the mafia franchise. It could be the ultimate drama about the mob. Mention characters in the game. So many shows are all about the universe, so they could launch three shows at the same time, each one based on a game in the series and a different timeline in mafia history.
8 Red Dead Redemption 1 & 2
The western genre has had a few successes on television, but it’s mainly been on the big screen where fans have seen this type of content. However, Deadwood is a classic and Westworld offered up a different type of western, creating a hybrid with science fiction.
There are so many options when it comes to a television adaptation of Red Dead Redemption 1+2. Not only is there two games worth of content to choose from, but players also have many different storylines and angles to go at it from. Go into detail about these angles.
7 Batman: Arkham Asylum/City
If they adapted Batman:Arkham Asylum and Arkham City into a series, it wouldn’t be the first time the caped crusader has appeared on tv screens. But it would be the first time he has appeared quite like this iteration of the character.
Asylum sees the Joker try to seize control of Arkham City and trap Batman inside. So far, not like anything fans have seen in the films or the tv shows. Arkham City actually sees Batman incarcerated, and he must use his detective skills to uncover a scheme cooked up by Hugo Strange, the prison warden.
6 The Quarry
David Arquette needs a new franchise after they mercilessly killed off his character, Dewey Riley in Scream (2022). What better way to bring him back onto screens than a limited series of The Quarry, which he starred in through the use of motion capture. This means that casting is already done on a potential series with no need to recast any of the excellent actors used in the game.
The game is all about choices, so they could potentially go down the route of choose viewers' own ending content that Netflix has trialed in shows like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Or they could simply choose the best options from the game and adapt it based on that. Either way, it’s a game that would fit perfectly on television screens.
5 Dead By Daylight
Horror is so popular right now, and what better way to bring all its iconic villains together, than in a television version of Dead by Daylight. It would be the ultimate fright fest for fans of the game and would bring in a lot of fans of the movies in which the game borrows from.
Imagine Ghostface and Michael Myers both stalking their prey on television screens. The horror fans would go wild for that. A potential spanner in the works for this series ever coming to fruition could be the rumored film adaptation of Dead by Daylight by Blumhouse. Having said that, if a movie version was successful, a tv spin off could be just around the corner.
4 L.A. Noire
Dark and violent crime thrillers are very much at home on television these days. It's only a matter of time before producers start trawling through the gaming content out there to discover this hidden gem. LA Noire follows Cole Phelps, an officer embarking on a desperate search for truth in 1940s Los Angeles.
It's one of Rockstar Games lesser known titles, and it had a difficult development process, hence why there hasn't been a sequel. But, Noir is very popular on tv right now with Bosch making a name for itself as Amazon's best and longest running show. Maybe they should sign up Cole Phelps to solve some cases on the streaming platform.
3 Until Dawn
Supermassive Games released Until Dawn in 2015. This was seven years before their popular game,The Quarry was released by the same company
It also features the motion capture of famous actors including Hayden Panettiere and Rami Malek. It's very much a story game and would be very straightforward to adapt into a television show. Panettiere recently returned to the Scream franchise as Kirby Reed, and her star seems to be in the ascendency at the moment. A return in a series of the cult game hit would appeal to the audience of the Scream series which had a very similar vibe to it.
2 A Way Out
Adapting this game might veer too closely in its subject matter to Prison Break. It follows two men trying to break out of prison, but there's enough that's different about it to work as a television show.
It would pull in the crowd that tuned in to Prison Break, as well as the fans of the game. It would be unlikely to run for 5 seasons or more, but limited series are all the rage at the moment and this one would fit that model perfectly.
1 Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy has had the movie treatment, and it didn't work. Instead of trying to reboot it as a movie franchise, it would work better as a long-running television series.
Working off the premise of each season being based on each game in the series, this would give characters time to grow, and storylines chance to unravel at a more manageable pace. This game series is one of the biggest around and fans of it would definitely invest in a series, but only if it was faithful to the source material.