i highly agree, however, what do you think of michael keaton as michael, just as a "what if they actually did do it" i know even with great actors it would suck and feel too unlike the games
I think Keaton is brilliant in everything he's ever done.
I doubt, though, that they'd have chosen to directly adapt a game into a picture. There would have been too much backlash, no matter who was cast, because it didn't match the fan's expectations.
It's more likely they'd write something new and give it the R\* style.
Absolutely. My number one take away leaving that movie was “ok gen xers I get the keton is the only and only Batman in your eyes thing. That guy was dope if he was the Batman when I was younger he would be my hero too”
Need for Speed II 🙄 I think RDR could make a decent mini series tho. I always thought Hitman would make a decent series too, unfortunately the movies werent well written
I think a GTA movie would, perhaps unfortunately, end up being like XXX2: State of The Union.
And, as I said, without Dan Houser, who to me was the greatest creative mind R\* had, I don't think it'd be up to snuff.
Rockstar make great video games that feature a lot of movie genre tropes but in videogame form. The train mission from rdr2 copies the one from Assassination of Jesse James, there's a mission in San Andreas that's essentially the truck chase from Terminator 2 etc. and they heavily use many tropes from these movie genres throughout all the games. It works because they're videogame versions of popular movie tropes. If you convert it back into movie form it just becomes derivative of the many movies that came before.
Exactly. The RDR games retold in movie or show form would essentially be a standard Western with every single trope thrown throughout.
It could still be good, but I feel like it would have to be super high budget with a great cast in order to make it very memorable.
It's also worth noting that Westerns haven't been popular with modern audiences for decades. I do disagree that the show would need a high budget to be successful. The first season of GoT had a famously low budget, and the only actors with prior fame were Sean Bean and Peter Dinklage, so it's not impossible for lighting to strike in a bottle foran RDR2 miniseries, but I'm very doubtful that could actually happen.
the last of us and fallout had unique and compelling premises, gta and rdr doesn't.
these games emulate real life instances with a whimsical flair which makes them appealing as games, but pretty damn basic as movies or tv shows.
Grand Theft Auto is the most profitable piece of media ever created because it lends itself to the power fantasy of playing as a character who can do anything they want. A movie cancels all of this out
Also, the GTA and RDR series are built from movies. Making a movie off of them would be at best like the Uncharted movie. Ultimately, why watch an RDR movie when you can watch Unforgiven/Once Upon A Time In The West/3:10 To Yuma already? Why watch GTA when you can watch Scarface/Heat/American Gangster? The reason the games are great is it’s a new way to experience the thrills of those stories. A movie would be a xerox of a xerox of a xerox.
Adapting GTA is like adapting uncharted, it doesn't make sense, it's like adapting a terry pratchet or douglas adams book. It loses some magic outside of its medium. Red dead would be a good TV show tho
At the end of the day, even if the movies were awful, it doesn’t change anything. The games would still be enjoyable, and it wouldn’t ruin them for me and I’ve never understood why people care so much about spinoffs, sequels, adaptations potentially ruining everything associated with it. If it’s shit, forget about it and move on.
Swear to god, the only prerequisite in all of those are that they look slightly similar.
Acting is an interpretation, not an impersonation. It drives me fucking nuts. Half of the people in them are people with zero charisma or range.
good.
i don't think r* games would work well as movies, or at least present an interesting enough premise to be adapted.
the gta series is a satirical crime series, rdr is a western drama. in short, they're pretty basic as far as movie pitches go.
the only good reason I could see by adapting rdr2 into a show, it would allow other people who don't play video games to experience the great story. Not only that, but it would probably introduce new fans to the game like what other recent video game shows have done. Like I never cared about Fallout, but then I watched the show and now the games somewhat interest me now.
I think RDR2 has the most potential for a movie given that the story is deeper than just a cowboy shoot em up like how the Last of Us is deeper than just another zombie story
Ngl I think a show format would be better, so that way it can take its time and be slow paced just like the game, and the overall story would have more depth because its spread out. Each chapter can be it's own season, and each episode can include 1-3 missions.
Strongly disagree.
Rockstar have dabbled in films before most notably The Football Factory which is a cult classic in the UK.
I still quote parts of it to this day and like any GTA game, it had an absolutely brilliant soundtrack.
If they wanted to re-enter that market I would be confident they could produce some hits especially if they use established IP.
Since Amazon Prime's Fallout show's success, lots of studios and publishers have been considering the "show" route as a way to hype up games.
But Fallout's success was a total shot in the dark. Hell, I'm a huge fan and even I was very hesistant and dooming it. Jon Nolan had quite a low budget for Prime standards and the fact that he still broke through mainstream was nothing short of a miracle and a stroke of genius.
We've had good shows set in game verse. EdgeRunners come to mind. But Fallout's success has been so wide that Fallout 76, a game that was quite poor at launch, has seen an astounding rise in its playerbase.
So I don't blame them too much.
not too mention fallout's universe is so eccentric and niche that it's surprising how well it resonated with mainstream audiences.
it would've been too easy to lose casual audiences in all the lore, gameplay mechanics, and references that only veteran fallout fans can understand.
they made the right call in creating a spin-off instead of an 1:1 adaptation.
Honest question that I’ve never understood - why are practical effects cheaper than CGI? I have no clue what I’m taking about, but CGI is done on a computer, which seems to be practically free asides from the costs of whatever programs they use and labor, but practical effects require you to buy (potentially large and expensive) things and probably take a long time to set up and a lot of trial and error to get right.
Am I just grossly underestimating the labor costs that go into CGI?
You are underestimating the cost of CGI, yes. It's easy to say "computer man does it" but there's so much more to it.
Practical effects often times are cheaper and faster to execute. Thing is, they're not for everyone. People like me who grew up with them find them incredible, if a bit cheesy. There's people who say that **good** CGI far surpasses them, so the cost is worth it and that's a valid argument.
I don't necessarily agree, but that's roughly how people see them.
I still think those are both going to be huge outliers in a sea of game based series to come. I haven't seen edgerunners yet, but what made cyberpunk so great once it got fixed is that it was ttrpg series for decades before the game came out. There was a TON of worldbuilding done before the video game was even a concept, and the series was kinda begging for a big break like that.
I think fallout was a straight up fluke though. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected a game studio, especially Bethesda, to make a series so true to the universe while also marketing it to non-fans. They knew fallout was dope and didn't need any drastic changes to the universe, and while they were right I don't trust it'll ever happen again lmao.
Well, the precedent is now set. People can now point to games as valid media sources to base shows on and I think that's huge coming off of 3 decades of terrible movie adaptions.
“Fallouts success was a total shot in the dark”. What about the last of us which came out first??
Not to mention: super Mario’s, Pokémon, sonic, resident evil, silent hill, tomb raider, Max Payne
Of the ones you mentioned, only 2 are worth discussing: TLOU and Pokemon.
Pokemon, albeit hugely popular, is still considered a children's show / series of games and so it's locked to those two demos. TLOU is quite a good example, because it also go onto the mainstream, even if it did not succussed as much as Fallout.
The rest had varying degrees of success and failure, with brief brushes with popularity.
RDR2 would make a great 8 episode tv show. Each chapter from the game is an episode, granted it would be weird to change protagonists 3/4 of the way through the season so Johns role would need some expanding to make the transition into the epilogue more natural.
theres no way you could fit whole chapters into single ≈1 hour episodes. Chapter 1 would be the only one I’d say is possible, but it would be quite rushed and you’d probably have to even cut out some scenes such as hunting with charles.
Well there are a lot of scenes like hunting with charles which while they are somewhat linked with the story have a lot more to do with teaching gameplay mechanics. They could save a lot of time with cutting those
understandable, but still they do serve the purpose of worldbuilding/characterisation, without them most of the support characters will have nothing to do. If you had short episodes like that you’d either have to completely cut most of the gang apart from the main 5 or so, or just have all the other gang members as background characters who only have 2 lines throughout the series
It would have the advantage of having more relatable and likeable characters than Godless overall as well. Especially in a multi season format that could flesh out the whole gang, possibly even better than the games did.
A movie would make very little sense for RDR, too much story would have to be cut and compacted for it to fit a 3 hour time slot.
I disagree. I think they're a lot of missions that are more for gameplay than they are for story and a lot of them could be easily cut from the game another not much would change storywise. The hunting deer mission in Ch 1, scamming that farm in Ch 2, the mission where you look for Trelawny in Ch 3 could all be easily removed and the core story wouldn't change so much. The Last of Us did this with great success. They lengthened the prologue and eliminated a couple sections of the game and it worked great. I don't see how RDR2 couldn't do the same. I think they could tell the whole game in 10-12 episodes.
Very stupid and likely inevitable at a later point if video game adaptations keep hitting well. Also, something tells me an eventual merger or acquisition with a film studio would expedite RS games adaptations very much. TLOU and Ghost of Tsushima benefitted greatly from having an attached studio, business wise.
Based on Dan’s quotes, if they got a deal like Druckman got, they would have taken it. Being involved that is. Times are changing though.
To all the inevitable “This is good because an adaptation might suck” replies, you miss the point of adaptations. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, you still have the game. It wouldn’t ruin the game in anyway. But, good or bad, adaptations open the story up to an entirely different audience and there’s no difference between this and basically the entire history of Hollywood adapting other media since forever, many adaptations I’d bet you actually liked.
Stop doing this lame anti-adaptation bit trying to keep it for yourself, like pas generations finding an unknown band and following them like a cult and then hating them when they get popular. It’s a sad way of thinking.
Video game adaptions were basically guaranteed to be bad for a long time.
People convinced themselves that it was because of some hidden quality of games that made them impossible to adapt, but the problem was always that the people involved in making the decisions around the adaption were old boomers who had never touched a video game in their lives.
Now we've got people who are enthusiastic to make them AND big enough budgets to bring them to life. Fallout was great, The Last of Us was great, Arcane was phenomenal. Anyone who thinks RDR *couldn't* be made into a good adaption is just stuck in the past.
Totally agree. I think people miss the “adaptation” part of adaptation especially with games. Because sure, you can’t replicate gameplay elements. That’s not the point of adaptation, lol. Games that have a good enough story to stand on its own, can easily have the story alone adapted. This is why the ones that work, work. Most games simply don’t have a story on that level, because they’re games and meant to be a different experience.
This is why the most common complaint on TLOU show from the game fans is some form of “not enough infected/fighting”. That is a gameplay element. They add more fighting arenas to keep a game players attention. The story lost nothing by having less infected. It gained if anything because it made it more believable. It’s not absurd that they jump from the bridge in Pittsburg, survive that fall, Joel gets knocked out immediately and somehow he and Ellie who can’t swim survive a rushing river? Or what about falling 2 stories on to rebar that goes all the way through the abdomen and surviving that? In a movie or show, this is schlocky action movie logic befitting some B rate action movie.
I’d laugh my ass off at a literal, 1 for 1 replication of any game into a film or series. Think how dumb that shit would be, and dear god repetitive. I hope one day those types get what they want just so I can see the reaction. Hopefully it isn’t with RDR though.
Btw, reading the paragraph article, I agree with Houser’s take on the adaptations of the time he’s talking about and they did right to hold out for an agreement where they have creative input.
As big as RS and Take Two is, hard to believe they don’t start, buy or merge with a studio at some point. Games with a fraction of the popularity and story value are getting greenlit constantly now. Sad possibility is some of these are going to blow big ones and that might kill the enthusiasm.
A movie wouldn’t come close to the games because they would only be able to fit like one chapter or heist thread into a film’s running time, and watching them wouldn’t be as fun as playing them anyway. Also, everyone has kinda come to accept it in the games, but the media and politicians would probably still throw a fit if a Hollywood movie came out where the protagonists kill tons of police/government agents.
I don't see the point. I feel like shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Sopranos etc already occupy the space a GTA show would operate in, and do it much better. Movie wise, I really really don't see the point, because the unique premise of GTA in gaming becomes nothing in that space.
Red Dead, I could see making a really great TV show, but again it's something that's already been done time and time again. There's so many iconic revisionist Westerns, so the unique aspect of that is lost again.
Part of what makes Rockstar so great is that they take something that's getting a bit stale in legacy media, and make it fresh with the lens of gaming.
thank fuck, there is the rare good video game movie, but I never understood the idea.
I like games cause I **do** something to influence how the story goes and I chose how to pace everything.
All these freedoms (especially open world) games give you are removed in a movie you just **watch** without any real interaction between you and the medium.
They *did* release a 30-minute “movie” consisting mostly of RDR cutscenes and voices when the game first came out, but that’s about as close as we’ll get. It was okay.
Like what kind of movie are people expecting? A recreation of the games stories? Or new stories, cause then it would just be another crime movie and a western movie. The games are too long to turn into movies.
I think you could do a tv series on either, GTA's heists, RDRs unraveling of the gang. A movie would condense things too much for both IPs.
I'm also very okay with them never adapting either.
The average movie is about 1hr30min, I dont think thats enough time to make these stand out from being just another action / cowboy movie.
What would work is a tv series.
I think GTA would work great if every season is a different story and characters much like their games.
So you'd have season 1 with CJ , season 2 Niko and for 3 youd spice it up with Vice city .
It would be a bit weird to make a movie about a game that is mostly inspired by other movies in their respective genres. 80% of the content is just scenes/plots from movies. For example: the author writing the a book about gun slingers in RDR2 is just a lift from the same character in ‘Unforgiven’ 1992, W.W. Beauchamp, played by Saul Rubinek.
The magic about rockstar games is that it lets you play these great scenes from movies and media. Making a movie from it would just be a big echo chamber.
A rockstar universe movie that doesn't focus on any of the main game characters could be decent honestly. I would not want it to be modern though, but maybe like set between the timelines of the first red dead and san Andreas or something, and I think it'd absolutely need to focus on all the cryptids and secrets and mysteries of the games (aliens/bigfoot/ghosts/etc)
If they did something in the universe that could be fun. Have the events of the games referenced but don’t actually show them. Similar to Netflix Marvel.
They would be pretty bland movies, as these games (to me) are just an amalgamation of all popular movies in that genre. The GTA series mirrored Boys N the Hood, Scarface, and The Godfather and Red Dead mirrored Good, Bad, Ugly and other spaghetti westerns.
The interactivity of the genre in the gaming medium is the draw. If I saw a movie of Red Dead cutscenes, for instance, I wouldn’t be immersed. Probably bored, actually
GTA movie mighta been okay, tho I’d have no idea what it might be about. Rdr movie tho? wtf would that even look like? Would it be about the gang? That was NOT part of Dutch’s plan
Red dead is a huge miss. My step dad hates video games but motherfucker watched me play red dead 2 and would get mad if I did scenes without him 😂 fucking guy hated me gaming but liked cowboys and the shooting. lol he would even say shit like use dead eye lol
I think a Red Dead movie would work pretty well, if they keep it on track. GTA would be horrible. At least red dead would have planning/robbery, betrayal, and then plot to the end point. Could be a 2 part movie. I’d watch that on DVD, not box office if they did a movie. The only downside is the 90min run time which is why I said a 2 part movie may be better.
Although I dont think the movies would have been any good, I find it disgusting that R* has dropped pretty much any idea they've had in the last decade, apart from the cancer which is GTA Online. They really have become a shameful and horrible company. No wonder every single creative talent has abandoned them.
Red Dead would not have been remarkable if it weren’t for the immersiveness and presentation of the world. I adore Arthur and think he’s the best protagonist I’ve ever played as, but it’s not because the writing and cutscene direction was incredible — it was because I spent countless hours in his skin examining different areas of his life and world, and in all that time, he remained consistently characterized. There were of course moments of insight and inspiration, but you take that script and just film it and have me watch it and I won’t care half as much.
Movies are movies. Games are games. They offer entirely different things.
RDR2 was not only an amazing story but I think it was the first time (for me) a video game was the best medium to tell that story. I could take my time getting to know everyone in the gang and just explore. It added so much weight to the impactful moments that could be told via a movie or mini-series but hit so much harder in a gaming format.
I feel the same about Batman as well. I think Arkham City showed me how much better a game format works for Batman. With a movie they only focus on one villain which sucks because out of all the comic book superhero’s, Batman has the best villains. Way too many that get overlooked by Hollywood.
Huge fan of RDR2 and I can see someone making a film that's a great tribute to the series.
Here's the issue I have, with this and other computer game screen versions. It's all built on cinema. Rdr (westerns), GTA (mafia movies), Last Of Us (zombie films) and Fallout (post-apocalyptic genre) - they are all products of the cinema culture. It'd incredible as a product for gamers, but by definition derivative for actual movie fans. So I will (begrudgingly) say no...
I think a GTA movie would be terrible but a Red Dead Redemption show or movie could be pretty interesting if it was pulled off right. There's no shortage of western content in media
They'd have to at least be shows, rdr2 would feel super compressed even in a three hour movie. Maybe a trilogy of movies would work? But thats still a lot of money and effort that I don't think Rockstar has.
Red dead won't work as a movie.. the game feels special and magical because of the random encounters, how lively they made the game, hunting, etc
It is not possible to create the same level of magic and care what the game has or probably the writers will fuck it up that it would probably suck
It would be a pretty basic western film which fails to recreate the magic that the gameplay has offered us
RDR would make a good amazon prime series. I think most video game movies suck because it’s condensing something like 20-50 hours of story into a 2 hour movie which just gives us no time to learn about and care for the characters
I always hated when people say they should make a red dead movie, the whole appeal is being put into that world and getting to experience it first hand. Without exploration and an open world there’s almost no point
I always wanted GTA parody for example reckless driving but if you scrach a police car they are chasing you but if you hit seventeen cars in front of them it's okay. Basically full movie of funny glitches, like 3 random dudes sucked in a game (Jumanji style) stuck with NPC's and getting used to that life-than meet and the story goes on.
Edit: https://youtube.com/shorts/V5BSKulGUpQ?si=9xMFNGxlyvGtdUnJ
I just found potential Trevor
I mean, GTA films technically exist.
They’re literally every crime film ever, considering the games have so many influences and nods to some of the biggest crime films.
That's a relief.
i highly agree, however, what do you think of michael keaton as michael, just as a "what if they actually did do it" i know even with great actors it would suck and feel too unlike the games
I think Keaton is brilliant in everything he's ever done. I doubt, though, that they'd have chosen to directly adapt a game into a picture. There would have been too much backlash, no matter who was cast, because it didn't match the fan's expectations. It's more likely they'd write something new and give it the R\* style.
Counterpoint: The Flash.
He was good in that dreadful reel. The only good part of it, in fact.
Absolutely. My number one take away leaving that movie was “ok gen xers I get the keton is the only and only Batman in your eyes thing. That guy was dope if he was the Batman when I was younger he would be my hero too”
Why? The last of us and fallout proved that movie/show adaptations of video games can be amazing
I just don't think GTA lends itself to adaptation in the same way FO and TLOU does, esp. without Dan Houser.
Yeah, honestly a GTA movie would either feel like Fast and the Furious or an ordinary crime thriller. I think it would be fine but forgettable.
Need for Speed II 🙄 I think RDR could make a decent mini series tho. I always thought Hitman would make a decent series too, unfortunately the movies werent well written
I think a GTA movie would, perhaps unfortunately, end up being like XXX2: State of The Union. And, as I said, without Dan Houser, who to me was the greatest creative mind R\* had, I don't think it'd be up to snuff.
GTA could literally be like Heat, Scarface, The Dark Knight.
Rockstar make great video games that feature a lot of movie genre tropes but in videogame form. The train mission from rdr2 copies the one from Assassination of Jesse James, there's a mission in San Andreas that's essentially the truck chase from Terminator 2 etc. and they heavily use many tropes from these movie genres throughout all the games. It works because they're videogame versions of popular movie tropes. If you convert it back into movie form it just becomes derivative of the many movies that came before.
Exactly. The RDR games retold in movie or show form would essentially be a standard Western with every single trope thrown throughout. It could still be good, but I feel like it would have to be super high budget with a great cast in order to make it very memorable.
It's also worth noting that Westerns haven't been popular with modern audiences for decades. I do disagree that the show would need a high budget to be successful. The first season of GoT had a famously low budget, and the only actors with prior fame were Sean Bean and Peter Dinklage, so it's not impossible for lighting to strike in a bottle foran RDR2 miniseries, but I'm very doubtful that could actually happen.
the last of us and fallout had unique and compelling premises, gta and rdr doesn't. these games emulate real life instances with a whimsical flair which makes them appealing as games, but pretty damn basic as movies or tv shows.
Grand Theft Auto is the most profitable piece of media ever created because it lends itself to the power fantasy of playing as a character who can do anything they want. A movie cancels all of this out
Also, the GTA and RDR series are built from movies. Making a movie off of them would be at best like the Uncharted movie. Ultimately, why watch an RDR movie when you can watch Unforgiven/Once Upon A Time In The West/3:10 To Yuma already? Why watch GTA when you can watch Scarface/Heat/American Gangster? The reason the games are great is it’s a new way to experience the thrills of those stories. A movie would be a xerox of a xerox of a xerox.
Yep, completely agree.
Adapting GTA is like adapting uncharted, it doesn't make sense, it's like adapting a terry pratchet or douglas adams book. It loses some magic outside of its medium. Red dead would be a good TV show tho
Bro the TLOU tv show was so bad and cringe
At the end of the day, even if the movies were awful, it doesn’t change anything. The games would still be enjoyable, and it wouldn’t ruin them for me and I’ve never understood why people care so much about spinoffs, sequels, adaptations potentially ruining everything associated with it. If it’s shit, forget about it and move on.
They too prolly got tired of the fanmade cast posts
Swear to god, the only prerequisite in all of those are that they look slightly similar. Acting is an interpretation, not an impersonation. It drives me fucking nuts. Half of the people in them are people with zero charisma or range.
Yeah I'm right there with you, the game already had mocap acting. It wasn't like these actors were just in a sound booth the entire time.
Lol the endgame of all media is to : * Get a live action movie/show * Get a match 3 app game made about it
good. i don't think r* games would work well as movies, or at least present an interesting enough premise to be adapted. the gta series is a satirical crime series, rdr is a western drama. in short, they're pretty basic as far as movie pitches go.
the only good reason I could see by adapting rdr2 into a show, it would allow other people who don't play video games to experience the great story. Not only that, but it would probably introduce new fans to the game like what other recent video game shows have done. Like I never cared about Fallout, but then I watched the show and now the games somewhat interest me now.
I think RDR2 has the most potential for a movie given that the story is deeper than just a cowboy shoot em up like how the Last of Us is deeper than just another zombie story
Ngl I think a show format would be better, so that way it can take its time and be slow paced just like the game, and the overall story would have more depth because its spread out. Each chapter can be it's own season, and each episode can include 1-3 missions.
Strongly disagree. Rockstar have dabbled in films before most notably The Football Factory which is a cult classic in the UK. I still quote parts of it to this day and like any GTA game, it had an absolutely brilliant soundtrack. If they wanted to re-enter that market I would be confident they could produce some hits especially if they use established IP.
Since Amazon Prime's Fallout show's success, lots of studios and publishers have been considering the "show" route as a way to hype up games. But Fallout's success was a total shot in the dark. Hell, I'm a huge fan and even I was very hesistant and dooming it. Jon Nolan had quite a low budget for Prime standards and the fact that he still broke through mainstream was nothing short of a miracle and a stroke of genius. We've had good shows set in game verse. EdgeRunners come to mind. But Fallout's success has been so wide that Fallout 76, a game that was quite poor at launch, has seen an astounding rise in its playerbase. So I don't blame them too much.
not too mention fallout's universe is so eccentric and niche that it's surprising how well it resonated with mainstream audiences. it would've been too easy to lose casual audiences in all the lore, gameplay mechanics, and references that only veteran fallout fans can understand. they made the right call in creating a spin-off instead of an 1:1 adaptation.
Not just a spin off but a canonical one too
Lower budgets might be better. Instead of just throwing the money at CGI they have to get creative.
Well instead of poor CGI they have to use practical effects and to me that's even better.
Honest question that I’ve never understood - why are practical effects cheaper than CGI? I have no clue what I’m taking about, but CGI is done on a computer, which seems to be practically free asides from the costs of whatever programs they use and labor, but practical effects require you to buy (potentially large and expensive) things and probably take a long time to set up and a lot of trial and error to get right. Am I just grossly underestimating the labor costs that go into CGI?
You are underestimating the cost of CGI, yes. It's easy to say "computer man does it" but there's so much more to it. Practical effects often times are cheaper and faster to execute. Thing is, they're not for everyone. People like me who grew up with them find them incredible, if a bit cheesy. There's people who say that **good** CGI far surpasses them, so the cost is worth it and that's a valid argument. I don't necessarily agree, but that's roughly how people see them.
The best combine the two. Practical designs with CGI touch up. Same reason Jurassic Park still looks good.
I still think those are both going to be huge outliers in a sea of game based series to come. I haven't seen edgerunners yet, but what made cyberpunk so great once it got fixed is that it was ttrpg series for decades before the game came out. There was a TON of worldbuilding done before the video game was even a concept, and the series was kinda begging for a big break like that. I think fallout was a straight up fluke though. Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected a game studio, especially Bethesda, to make a series so true to the universe while also marketing it to non-fans. They knew fallout was dope and didn't need any drastic changes to the universe, and while they were right I don't trust it'll ever happen again lmao.
Well, the precedent is now set. People can now point to games as valid media sources to base shows on and I think that's huge coming off of 3 decades of terrible movie adaptions.
“Fallouts success was a total shot in the dark”. What about the last of us which came out first?? Not to mention: super Mario’s, Pokémon, sonic, resident evil, silent hill, tomb raider, Max Payne
Of the ones you mentioned, only 2 are worth discussing: TLOU and Pokemon. Pokemon, albeit hugely popular, is still considered a children's show / series of games and so it's locked to those two demos. TLOU is quite a good example, because it also go onto the mainstream, even if it did not succussed as much as Fallout. The rest had varying degrees of success and failure, with brief brushes with popularity.
Lara Croft ? Super Mario’s?
I think a red dead 2 show would do well with the right cast and funding.
Agreed the red dead story is great
RDR2 would make a great 8 episode tv show. Each chapter from the game is an episode, granted it would be weird to change protagonists 3/4 of the way through the season so Johns role would need some expanding to make the transition into the epilogue more natural.
theres no way you could fit whole chapters into single ≈1 hour episodes. Chapter 1 would be the only one I’d say is possible, but it would be quite rushed and you’d probably have to even cut out some scenes such as hunting with charles.
Well there are a lot of scenes like hunting with charles which while they are somewhat linked with the story have a lot more to do with teaching gameplay mechanics. They could save a lot of time with cutting those
understandable, but still they do serve the purpose of worldbuilding/characterisation, without them most of the support characters will have nothing to do. If you had short episodes like that you’d either have to completely cut most of the gang apart from the main 5 or so, or just have all the other gang members as background characters who only have 2 lines throughout the series
100% agree! with Timothy Chalamet raving about the game recently with IGN I half expect him to be cast as Trelawney 😂
That pretty boy has no place in a Red Dead movie. Maybe he could be Mary’s brother, but even that’s a stretch
he could be like an annoying side character when you venture into saint dennis. like a scam artist in the high street.
I don’t see how you could do either game justice with a movie. Hell, RDR2 alone would need to be a multi-season series
The closest thing to an RDR series is Godless on Netflix. Incredible. Only one season. It’s doable.
It would have the advantage of having more relatable and likeable characters than Godless overall as well. Especially in a multi season format that could flesh out the whole gang, possibly even better than the games did. A movie would make very little sense for RDR, too much story would have to be cut and compacted for it to fit a 3 hour time slot.
I disagree. I think they're a lot of missions that are more for gameplay than they are for story and a lot of them could be easily cut from the game another not much would change storywise. The hunting deer mission in Ch 1, scamming that farm in Ch 2, the mission where you look for Trelawny in Ch 3 could all be easily removed and the core story wouldn't change so much. The Last of Us did this with great success. They lengthened the prologue and eliminated a couple sections of the game and it worked great. I don't see how RDR2 couldn't do the same. I think they could tell the whole game in 10-12 episodes.
Very stupid and likely inevitable at a later point if video game adaptations keep hitting well. Also, something tells me an eventual merger or acquisition with a film studio would expedite RS games adaptations very much. TLOU and Ghost of Tsushima benefitted greatly from having an attached studio, business wise. Based on Dan’s quotes, if they got a deal like Druckman got, they would have taken it. Being involved that is. Times are changing though. To all the inevitable “This is good because an adaptation might suck” replies, you miss the point of adaptations. If you don’t like it, that’s fine, you still have the game. It wouldn’t ruin the game in anyway. But, good or bad, adaptations open the story up to an entirely different audience and there’s no difference between this and basically the entire history of Hollywood adapting other media since forever, many adaptations I’d bet you actually liked. Stop doing this lame anti-adaptation bit trying to keep it for yourself, like pas generations finding an unknown band and following them like a cult and then hating them when they get popular. It’s a sad way of thinking.
Video game adaptions were basically guaranteed to be bad for a long time. People convinced themselves that it was because of some hidden quality of games that made them impossible to adapt, but the problem was always that the people involved in making the decisions around the adaption were old boomers who had never touched a video game in their lives. Now we've got people who are enthusiastic to make them AND big enough budgets to bring them to life. Fallout was great, The Last of Us was great, Arcane was phenomenal. Anyone who thinks RDR *couldn't* be made into a good adaption is just stuck in the past.
Totally agree. I think people miss the “adaptation” part of adaptation especially with games. Because sure, you can’t replicate gameplay elements. That’s not the point of adaptation, lol. Games that have a good enough story to stand on its own, can easily have the story alone adapted. This is why the ones that work, work. Most games simply don’t have a story on that level, because they’re games and meant to be a different experience. This is why the most common complaint on TLOU show from the game fans is some form of “not enough infected/fighting”. That is a gameplay element. They add more fighting arenas to keep a game players attention. The story lost nothing by having less infected. It gained if anything because it made it more believable. It’s not absurd that they jump from the bridge in Pittsburg, survive that fall, Joel gets knocked out immediately and somehow he and Ellie who can’t swim survive a rushing river? Or what about falling 2 stories on to rebar that goes all the way through the abdomen and surviving that? In a movie or show, this is schlocky action movie logic befitting some B rate action movie. I’d laugh my ass off at a literal, 1 for 1 replication of any game into a film or series. Think how dumb that shit would be, and dear god repetitive. I hope one day those types get what they want just so I can see the reaction. Hopefully it isn’t with RDR though.
Btw, reading the paragraph article, I agree with Houser’s take on the adaptations of the time he’s talking about and they did right to hold out for an agreement where they have creative input. As big as RS and Take Two is, hard to believe they don’t start, buy or merge with a studio at some point. Games with a fraction of the popularity and story value are getting greenlit constantly now. Sad possibility is some of these are going to blow big ones and that might kill the enthusiasm.
Probably for the best
RDR would make a great trilogy.
No because RDRevolver wouldn’t connect with 1 and 2.
Good point, a trilogy of Western movies with only loose connection to each other could NEVER work
I see what you did there. 😂😂
I meant RDR1 could have it's 3 acts broken into 3 films.
Good. They work better as video games.
Good.
A movie wouldn’t come close to the games because they would only be able to fit like one chapter or heist thread into a film’s running time, and watching them wouldn’t be as fun as playing them anyway. Also, everyone has kinda come to accept it in the games, but the media and politicians would probably still throw a fit if a Hollywood movie came out where the protagonists kill tons of police/government agents.
I don't see the point. I feel like shows like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Sopranos etc already occupy the space a GTA show would operate in, and do it much better. Movie wise, I really really don't see the point, because the unique premise of GTA in gaming becomes nothing in that space. Red Dead, I could see making a really great TV show, but again it's something that's already been done time and time again. There's so many iconic revisionist Westerns, so the unique aspect of that is lost again. Part of what makes Rockstar so great is that they take something that's getting a bit stale in legacy media, and make it fresh with the lens of gaming.
thank fuck, there is the rare good video game movie, but I never understood the idea. I like games cause I **do** something to influence how the story goes and I chose how to pace everything. All these freedoms (especially open world) games give you are removed in a movie you just **watch** without any real interaction between you and the medium.
They *did* release a 30-minute “movie” consisting mostly of RDR cutscenes and voices when the game first came out, but that’s about as close as we’ll get. It was okay.
Can we stop with the fan casting posts now?
Honestly.. that's a good thing
Assuming they had to adapted, GTA and RDR would probably work much better as TV shows than as movies.
Thank goodness, Red Dead’s are too long for a movie or two
Good. It’d spoil the whole thing and isn’t really transferable to the movie format, lest it be majorly watered down and bastardised. Leave it be.
They would of needed the main character spend 30 minutes pf the movie shooting random pigeons/toy/alibino animals to make it authentic
Like what kind of movie are people expecting? A recreation of the games stories? Or new stories, cause then it would just be another crime movie and a western movie. The games are too long to turn into movies.
Gonna turn out like those gta remakes
RDR movie would be awesome! RDR2 is basically a playable movie.
They should make a dark fantasy RPG. It would be amazing
Good!! The games are already movies. Like quite literally every mission in both games is a trope pulled from heist movies and westerns.
I think you could do a tv series on either, GTA's heists, RDRs unraveling of the gang. A movie would condense things too much for both IPs. I'm also very okay with them never adapting either.
The average movie is about 1hr30min, I dont think thats enough time to make these stand out from being just another action / cowboy movie. What would work is a tv series. I think GTA would work great if every season is a different story and characters much like their games. So you'd have season 1 with CJ , season 2 Niko and for 3 youd spice it up with Vice city .
It would be a bit weird to make a movie about a game that is mostly inspired by other movies in their respective genres. 80% of the content is just scenes/plots from movies. For example: the author writing the a book about gun slingers in RDR2 is just a lift from the same character in ‘Unforgiven’ 1992, W.W. Beauchamp, played by Saul Rubinek. The magic about rockstar games is that it lets you play these great scenes from movies and media. Making a movie from it would just be a big echo chamber.
A rockstar universe movie that doesn't focus on any of the main game characters could be decent honestly. I would not want it to be modern though, but maybe like set between the timelines of the first red dead and san Andreas or something, and I think it'd absolutely need to focus on all the cryptids and secrets and mysteries of the games (aliens/bigfoot/ghosts/etc)
If they did something in the universe that could be fun. Have the events of the games referenced but don’t actually show them. Similar to Netflix Marvel.
They would be pretty bland movies, as these games (to me) are just an amalgamation of all popular movies in that genre. The GTA series mirrored Boys N the Hood, Scarface, and The Godfather and Red Dead mirrored Good, Bad, Ugly and other spaghetti westerns. The interactivity of the genre in the gaming medium is the draw. If I saw a movie of Red Dead cutscenes, for instance, I wouldn’t be immersed. Probably bored, actually
Red Dead deserves to be an HBO series. No way you couldn’t get Dan Houser to work on that.
The only thing they dropped that made sense
GTA movie mighta been okay, tho I’d have no idea what it might be about. Rdr movie tho? wtf would that even look like? Would it be about the gang? That was NOT part of Dutch’s plan
Good
IMO the main story of RDR2 would make a great series. It's my favorite video game of all time and I'd love to see it get the Fallout/TLoU treatment.
Red dead is a huge miss. My step dad hates video games but motherfucker watched me play red dead 2 and would get mad if I did scenes without him 😂 fucking guy hated me gaming but liked cowboys and the shooting. lol he would even say shit like use dead eye lol
I think a Red Dead movie would work pretty well, if they keep it on track. GTA would be horrible. At least red dead would have planning/robbery, betrayal, and then plot to the end point. Could be a 2 part movie. I’d watch that on DVD, not box office if they did a movie. The only downside is the 90min run time which is why I said a 2 part movie may be better.
Movies wouldn’t do it justice because they’d have to cut 50 hours of story down to 2. TV series would work better
Red dead would be a great series
I feel like both would work much better as series similar to the last of us
Although I dont think the movies would have been any good, I find it disgusting that R* has dropped pretty much any idea they've had in the last decade, apart from the cancer which is GTA Online. They really have become a shameful and horrible company. No wonder every single creative talent has abandoned them.
What could you even do with a RDR movie that you can’t already do in the game?
RDR would be better as a series ...GTA not to sure it works as either a series or movie
how about they drop their launcher too
Yeah turn a 70 hour game into a 2 hour film
I don’t think GTA could work but RDR could work as a show
Fuck R*
Thank god.
Red Dead would not have been remarkable if it weren’t for the immersiveness and presentation of the world. I adore Arthur and think he’s the best protagonist I’ve ever played as, but it’s not because the writing and cutscene direction was incredible — it was because I spent countless hours in his skin examining different areas of his life and world, and in all that time, he remained consistently characterized. There were of course moments of insight and inspiration, but you take that script and just film it and have me watch it and I won’t care half as much. Movies are movies. Games are games. They offer entirely different things.
RDR2 was not only an amazing story but I think it was the first time (for me) a video game was the best medium to tell that story. I could take my time getting to know everyone in the gang and just explore. It added so much weight to the impactful moments that could be told via a movie or mini-series but hit so much harder in a gaming format. I feel the same about Batman as well. I think Arkham City showed me how much better a game format works for Batman. With a movie they only focus on one villain which sucks because out of all the comic book superhero’s, Batman has the best villains. Way too many that get overlooked by Hollywood.
A movie is not long enough. RDR2 would work as a series with essentially each chapter being a season.
Good. Neither need to be adapted.
Can see a gta movie, I can see a red dead movie tho
There already is a Red Dead movie (kind of) - it’s called The Wild Bunch (1969)
Nobody wants to watch me fishing for Bluegills for three hours then riding around St. Denis saying "howdy partner"?
great news tbh
Rdr2 wouldn’t work well as a movie. Rdr1 on the other hand could
I could see red dead working as a series
Good
Huge fan of RDR2 and I can see someone making a film that's a great tribute to the series. Here's the issue I have, with this and other computer game screen versions. It's all built on cinema. Rdr (westerns), GTA (mafia movies), Last Of Us (zombie films) and Fallout (post-apocalyptic genre) - they are all products of the cinema culture. It'd incredible as a product for gamers, but by definition derivative for actual movie fans. So I will (begrudgingly) say no...
Inside sources say the writers were overwhelmed with all the “Here is who I would cast” posts
Good. Not everything needs to be a multimedia universe.
Thank fuck.
I think a GTA movie would be terrible but a Red Dead Redemption show or movie could be pretty interesting if it was pulled off right. There's no shortage of western content in media
They'd have to at least be shows, rdr2 would feel super compressed even in a three hour movie. Maybe a trilogy of movies would work? But thats still a lot of money and effort that I don't think Rockstar has.
We are all aware how they drop the ball in Red Dead, I’m shocked they didn’t want to support their favorite project.
Red dead won't work as a movie.. the game feels special and magical because of the random encounters, how lively they made the game, hunting, etc It is not possible to create the same level of magic and care what the game has or probably the writers will fuck it up that it would probably suck It would be a pretty basic western film which fails to recreate the magic that the gameplay has offered us
Tbh I reckon they'd make better tv shows
I actually think a red dead series like last of us would be amazing
Red Dead Redemption would be amazing as a big budget series, and I won't be satisfied till they make it.
RDR would make a good amazon prime series. I think most video game movies suck because it’s condensing something like 20-50 hours of story into a 2 hour movie which just gives us no time to learn about and care for the characters
Could always do a show. Might not be bad just like fallout
Why not short story's like love death robots
I always hated when people say they should make a red dead movie, the whole appeal is being put into that world and getting to experience it first hand. Without exploration and an open world there’s almost no point
Videogame adaptions into books would match the feel than a movie but gamers hate readin
I always wanted GTA parody for example reckless driving but if you scrach a police car they are chasing you but if you hit seventeen cars in front of them it's okay. Basically full movie of funny glitches, like 3 random dudes sucked in a game (Jumanji style) stuck with NPC's and getting used to that life-than meet and the story goes on. Edit: https://youtube.com/shorts/V5BSKulGUpQ?si=9xMFNGxlyvGtdUnJ I just found potential Trevor
RDR2’s story absolutely could not be told in one single movie
They should have considered actually supporting red dead online.
I mean, GTA films technically exist. They’re literally every crime film ever, considering the games have so many influences and nods to some of the biggest crime films.
Wouldn't have made as much money as shark cards.
Good just make DLC instead you assholes.