Assassin’s Creed and Need for Speed Publishers Want Bigger Roles in Their Games’ Film Adaptations

To date, there hasn't been a truly successful video game franchise that's crossed over to film and become a huge hit. The publishers, like Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, are aiming to change that.

Hollywood Reporter has posted an article dealing with video games and their film adaptations. The marriage of the two mediums have not done prolifically well, despite some movies like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider making $131 million, and the Resident Evil series bringing in $876 million worldwide over a span of about a decade. But on their own, each Resident Evil movie only made $40-$60 million in the United States.

Hollywood Reporter's Tatiana Siegel says that this, "low success rate has scared off a few video game execs," but some are taking steps to create better adaptions by regaining creative control over their intellectual properties, such as developer/publisher, Ubisoft. The company made games like Prince of Persia, which was turned into a movie produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, but did poorly in the the box offices.

But now that it's made its own film division, Ubisoft is getting a more hands-on approach with its next two films, based on Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell. The company has even attached Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy to star in both films, respectively.

The film division of Ubisoft includes CEO Jean-Juliet Baronnet, the former head of Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, who said, "These packages are exactly what we want to reflect -- mainstream but high-quality movies. We don't want to just make popcorn movies."

Electronic Arts is doing something similar with its Need for Speed movie. The company worked with the writers on the script and its VP of Entertainment, Patrick O'Brien, has had a hand in making all of the important decisions regarding the project, which is to star Breaking Bad's Aaron Paul.

Hopefully all of the hands-on interaction from the publishers will make for better movie-going experiences that fans can enjoy. For more on video games and their jump to film, check out the full article on Hollywood Reporter.

And as always, let us know what you think about films based on games and how more creative control from the publishers could help or hurt them.