While video game adaptations on the big screen are typically less-than-stellar, Hollywood still hasn’t lost its enthusiasm for such projects.
The current climate is obviously somewhat conducive for such grand efforts, especially after Halo 4 made an estimated $300 million its first week on sale, and Call of Duty Black Ops II blew that gross out the door with $500 million its first day on sale.
There was a point where video games were doing better than Hollywood, and it looks like right now games are back with a vengeance, once again making more money than blockbuster movies.
So in addition to the announcements that Assassin’s Creed and Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell are slated for the big screen, now comes the news that Deus Ex: Revolution is also going to become a film with Scott Derrickson, the director of Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose.
Derrickson will be writing the treatment for the movie with his writing partner in crime, C. Robert Cargill. For those who aren’t familiar with franchise, Deus Ex is about an ex-member of the SWAT team named Adam Jensen, who in the near future is trying to uncover a world-wide conspiracy. As Cinema Blend reports, Square Enix is going to make the movie in a partnership with CBS Films, unlike Splinter Cell, which Ubisoft is developing with their own movie division, and will later sell to a major studio.
Sinister, which stars Ethan Hawke, has garnered good reviews, but it is reportedly very disturbing stuff, so it will be interesting to see if this adaptation will be dark, or if director Derrickson is looking for a change of pace.
We suspect the latter, because in a statement, Derrickson said, “Deus Ex is a phenomenal cyberpunk game with soul and intelligence. By combining amazing action and tension with big, philosophical ideas, Deus Ex is smart, ballsy, and will make one hell of a movie…Cargill and I can’t wait to bring to the big screen.”
Again, the gaming market is on fire right now, so it’s not surprising to see Hollywood wanting to snap up games to be adapted into movies. And maybe in the right hands we’ll finally have the great video game movie we’ve always been waiting for. Could Deus Ex be the one? We’ll find out soon enough.
