While there are many video game adaptations that make their arrival in cinemas and on streaming platforms these days, there are many, many more in the pipeline. In fact, you've probably lost track of all of the adaptations that have been snapped up, perhaps somewhat because many of them are confirmed to be in-development to some degree and then seem to disappear into the aether.
Speaking about this, one person who is very experienced with getting video game adaptations over the line, Castlevania and Devil May Cry's showrunner Adi Shankar, has mentioned that he doesn't expect to see many of these projects ever.
In an interview with GamesRadar+, Shankar stated: "I just don't think most of these things are going to come to fruition, because there's so many stakeholders. It's easy to [say] we're gonna adapt this game. But that's nothing new. There have been announcements of comic book movies, video game movies and TV shows. That's been part of the media cycle since the '90s, for sure.
"We're not going to get to a point where 50 a year are going to be made. They're announcing a lot... If we're talking straight adaptations - like we're treating this video game as a novel - [and] we have 50 of those a year, at that point the audience is going to be really excited about original stuff."
Shankar then signs off by adding that even the ones which are being made will eventually be "cringe" as "they're not really run by the people that made the games. They're run by corporations who have now assigned brand managers to manage them". He also notes that games are starting to be treated as brands and logos and that "now everything's a brand, man. At that point, you're like, well, where's the Captain Crunch movie?"
Do you agree with Shankar's take on video game adaptations?