We discuss the best results of the collaboration between Hollywood and the gaming industry.
Over the many decades of video games’ existence, there have been numerous attempts to adapt them for the screen. Most of these attempts have been unsuccessful, and there are several reasons for this.
Firstly, sometimes people who were unfamiliar with the original source material took on such projects, which led to a complete mismatch between the film and the game. This was the case, for example, with the 1983 film Super Mario Bros., which was entered into the Guinness Book of Records as the first film based on a video game, but was also completely panned by critics and flopped at the box office.
Minecraft in the cinema (2025)
Minecraft in the cinema is a real phenomenon of our time. The film was rather coldly received by critics, but this did not prevent it from becoming the highest-grossing video game adaptation, surpassing Super Mario Bros. The lion’s share of the film’s revenue came from young viewers, who stormed cinemas in droves, cheering and jumping at literally every scene in the film, throwing popcorn around the auditoriums and behaving so boisterously that in some cases they even had to be removed by the police.
Here are some interesting games – Voltage Bet – US sportbook
This is not surprising, considering that Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the world, and the vast majority of its audience are children (although many of them have already grown up and have children of their own). They don’t really need a plot, which here is a typical story about people who find themselves in a strange cubic world and now have to go on a magical quest to return to their universe.
Borderlands (2024)
Plans to adapt the Borderlands series for the screen have been in the works since 2011, but the film didn’t make it to release until 2024. And in the opinion of many, it would have been better if it had disappeared into production hell. The film adaptation turned out sterile and bland, some of the actors don’t fit their characters at all, and the humour is sometimes embarrassing.
On the other hand, the setting is quite authentic, there are some good jokes, and the action is very unashamed. The plot basically repeats the outline of the original games: a motley crew of misfits unite in an adventure that will lead them to the gates of the legendary Vault, rumoured to be full of artefacts from an alien civilisation.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
The horror game Five Nights at Freddy’s is supposed to scare the viewer, but for some reason it turns out to be not scary at all, and in some moments even annoying, plunging the viewer into a completely unnecessary family drama.
The plot centres on a guy named Mike, who gets a job as a night guard at a closed entertainment centre. Soon, the hero will learn that the local animatronic dolls have the ability to come to life and move freely around the halls, which threatens not only his life, but also the lives of his loved ones. Despite its rather weak performance, the film received an announced sequel, but if you want to see something closer in spirit to the Five Nights at Freddy’s series, check out the trash horror film Willy’s Wonderland (18+) starring Nicolas Cage.
Tetris (2023)
You would hardly guess that Tetris is a film about the difficult fate of geometric shapes. And you would be right, because this biopic is dedicated to the story of the creator of the legendary game, Soviet programmer Alexey Pajitnov.
The film, starring Taron Egerton and Nikita Efremov, tells the story of the struggle to obtain a licence to distribute the game worldwide. Despite the impressive amount of ‘cranberries’, the film is quite light and enjoyable.