The rise of gaming adaptations
Posted on May 2, 2026 by Admin
As lines blur between visual media, studios & filmmakers are flocking to gaming franchises. We unpack the creative & commercial motives behind the growing number of IP adaptations
Words Katie Kasperson
Best adapted screenplay – though once under a different name – has been an Academy Award since the Oscars’ inception in 1929, with notable winners including page-to-screen adaptations of To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, The Exorcist and The Godfather. But it’s not 1929 any more, and filmmakers are adapting on-screen entertainment from another, more modern medium: video games.
Gaming IP is everywhere; you would be hard-pressed to find someone who hasn’t heard of Pokémon or Mario and Luigi. Over the last few decades, developers have improved game graphics, with some even hiring cinematic artists (or video game cinematographers) to make their titles feel more filmic. This is especially true for narrative games like Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, inspired in part by Night of the Living Dead. The game’s TV adaptation – which follows its source fairly closely – is currently prepping for its third season.
Game adaptations have also been outperforming their peers at the box office. A Minecraft Movie – starring Jack Black and Jason Momoa, who get sucked into a cubic fantasy world – was the highest-grossing film of 2025, raking in $424.1 million in US ticket sales for a $961.2 million worldwide total. Before that, The Super Mario Bros Movie made history as the first video game adaptation to gross $1 billion globally, earning a Guinness World Record for the achievement. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie – also based on existing IP – was the only 2023 title to earn more.
These projects have proved their financial merit to studios, which have continued to greenlight both animated and live-action adaptations. Titles slated for 2026 include Resident Evil and Street Fighter as well as sequels to Mortal Kombat and The Super Mario Bros. Movie. But it’s about more than the money; these adaptations are resonating with audiences.
The continuity question
Gaming IP makes for successful screen adaptations for a multitude of reasons, including catering content to existing fanbases and preserving creative continuity through collaboration with developers. Sometimes, these folks will serve as showrunners or executive producers; such was the case with The Last of Us’s Neil Druckmann, who served as writer, director, EP, co-creator and co-showrunner on the first two seasons.
“Who remembers back in the nineties, the Street Fighter movie? That didn’t go down too well, right?” asked HaZ Dulull, filmmaker and game director at Beyond the Pixels, during a gaming IP panel at Focus 2026. “That’s because the Hollywood studio made the movie and didn’t involve the creators at all. Flash forward to today, you have Sonic, you have Mario – two movies that have done really well – and Minecraft. The difference is that the studios didn’t just license the IP; they reached out to the developers and said, ‘We want to play in your world. Come collaborate with us.’”
It also helps that video games, unlike books, are an inherently visual medium. For those who both played The Last of Us (game series) and watched The Last of Us (TV series), they may have noticed certain frames were almost identical matches. “Director Mark Mylod and I watched the game together,” said Catherine Goldschmidt, the show’s DOP, in a previous interview. “In the game, when Joel dies, it’s a oner and we knew we would depart from this. For those who played the game, the question was: are we going to do it justice?”
Appealing to all ages
While existing fans might be hard to please (many didn’t love the creative liberties taken by The Last of Us’s production team), they’re also more invested in the material – and therefore more likely to put their money behind it. Sequels and adaptations are a relatively low-risk endeavour for studios (perhaps less so for the filmmakers themselves) who are trying to put bums on seats; if a video game is a best-seller, its adaptation probably will be too.
This is true across the board. Take Disney, which has produced a steady stream of live-action adaptations of its animated classics, including The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Snow White. It’s a tumultuous time for the industry, and existing IP eliminates uncertainty.
Video game adaptations tend to hit all four quadrants, appealing to people across genders and age groups. “Peak IPs are now multi-generational,” said Danwen Huang, project coordinator at Games London, at Focus 2026.
Finally, video game development and filmmaking are starting to merge thanks to advancements in virtual production. Unreal Engine by Epic Games powers artists and other VFX specialists tasked with designing photoreal backgrounds for LED volumes. If the tools and skills are transferable, why not the medium?
In an industry rife with sequels, prequels and spin-offs, adaptations aren’t going anywhere. While novels
and stage plays have seen their share of screen time, video games are on the rise, offering low commercial risk for studios, a solid visual foundation for filmmakers and a chance to engage existing and emerging fans alike.
This article appears in the April/May 2026 issue of Definition
