For years, Hollywood has been churning outgame to film adaptationslike 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.
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Recently, games likeThe Last of Ushave gone down a different route of creating a serialized television seriesbased on the source material, with more success. There are many more games that could go down this route with similar success. Here are somevideo games that would make great TV shows,updated by Callum Murray.
10Grand 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 5is a game that has provided countless amounts of explosive action and brilliant storylines.
Grand Theft Auto 5stands 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.
9Mafia Trilogy
Ever sinceThe Sopranoshit 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 notablyBoardwalk Empirewhich introduced the early days of the mob.TheMafia Trilogycharts it all from the golden era of the mob to its eventual downfall.
The thought of big budget sprawling television series based on the popularMafia Trilogyis enough to whet the appetite of any fan of themafia 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.
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,Deadwoodis a classic andWestworldoffered up a different type of western, creating a hybrid with science fiction.
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There are so many options when it comes to a television adaptation ofRed 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.
7Batman: Arkham Asylum/City
If they adaptedBatman:Arkham AsylumandArkham Cityinto 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.
Asylumsees the Joker attempt to seize control ofArkham Cityand trap Batman inside. So far, not like anything fans have seen in the films or the tv shows.Arkham Cityactually sees Batman incarcerated, and he must use his detective skills to uncover a scheme cooked up by Hugo Strange, the prison warden.
6The Quarry
David Arquette needs a new franchise after they mercilessly killed off his character,Dewey Riley inScream (2022). What better way to bring him back onto screens than a limited series ofThe 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 likeBlack 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.
Horror is so popular right now, and what better way to bring all itsiconic villains together, than in a television version ofDead 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 ofDead by Daylightby Blumhouse. Having said that, if a movie version was successful, a tv spin off could be just around the corner.
4L.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 Noirefollows Cole Phelps, an officer embarking on a desperate search for truth in 1940s Los Angeles.
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3Until Dawn
Supermassive Games releasedUntil Dawnin 2015. This was seven years before their popular game,The Quarrywas 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 theScreamfranchise 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 theScreamseries which had a very similar vibe to it.
2A Way Out
Adapting this game might veer too closely in its subject matter toPrison 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 toPrison 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.
1Final Fantasy
Final Fantasyhas 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.
