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MISSES THAN HITS
 “Speed” director Jan De Bont was hired to
helm the sequel to the 2001 hit, “Tomb Raider”
entitled “Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of
Life”. Croft is tasked to retrieve to find a Pandora’s
Box and this time, it takes her to locations such as
Africa, Hong Kong and Greece which of course increase
the production costs to a 100 million in reality. Alas,
the sequel couldn’t pull in the audience resulting
in a feud between Edios and Paramount Pictures who blamed
each other for the failure. The ongoing feud was far
more exciting than the movie itself. The subsequent
planned third sequel was scrapped by Paramount and the
last we heard, Edios is finding new financers possibly
Warner Bros for
a franchise reboot.
As
if one is not enough to prove it’s silliness,
the one and only Uwe Boll dubbed the worst director
in recent history contributed his share by helming an
insane five adaptations “The House of the Dead”,
“Alone In The Dark”, “BloodRayne”,
its sequel and “In the Name of the King”.
The bad news is all bombed without a trace in the box-office
while the good news is most of us in Singapore never
paid a single hard-earned penny to sit through any of
them.
THE ASIA CONNECTION
In
Asia, to coincide with the launch of its sequel “Forbidden
Siren 2”, “Forbidden Siren” the movie
which is based on Sony’s Forbidden Siren series
for Playstation2 was released in Japan on February 2006
and Singapore in  September.
Konami’s “Silent Hill” directed by
Christophe Gans draws certain parallels with “Forbidden
Siren” with its repetitive warning siren theme
as both had more or less the same team working on both
the original Silent Hill game and the first Forbidden
Siren game. Our in-house reviewers call “Silent
Hill” as total atmospheric terror and
rates “Forbidden Siren” for its excellent
ghastly atmospheric qualities.
 With
popular Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as Sergeant Thomas
"Sarge" Kelley, “Doom” which utilizes
the first-person shooter perspective in the movie version
failed even with its gratuitous violence and Stan Winston’s
creature effects. In 2006, renowned HK action choreographer
Corey Yuen took on “DOA: Dead or Alive”,
the Tecmo video game. Assembling a cast of pretty babes
including Jaime Pressley, Devon Aoki and Holly Valance
in skimpy outfits and passable kungfu moves, the movie
fails to find its audience in the end and what a surprise
given the huge base of male gamers.
THE GAME IS STILL ON
 The best-selling X-Box game of all time, Halo was long
rumoured to be a hot property among the studios. Director
Peter Jackson and Universal Studios were at one point
attached to the project but it was announced to the
disappointment of fans worldwide that the project couldn’t
take off as a result of a ballooning production budget even though the game itself sold almost US$600 million in the States alone.
At
the same time, studios continue to churn out movie adaptations
even though the end product normally deviate  itself
from the source material. Fox’s “Hitman”
and “Max Payne” were two recent examples
that took a beating from both the critics and the audience.
On the home video side, “Dead Space: Downfall”
and “Resident Evil: Degeneration” are two
prominent direct-to-video titles released in 2008 which
emphasized more on the violence than anything else.
WANNA PLAY?
Whether
you like it or not, movies adapted from video games
is a trend to stay. Next year Disney will release its
tentpole project in summer, “Prince of Persia:
The Sands of Time” starring Jake Gyllenhaal. Gordon
Chan’s “King of Fighters” starring
Maggie Q and Ray Park is also in the release pipeline.
Others such as “Metal Gear Solid”, “Rainbow
Six”, “Spy Hunter” are still circling
in the rumour mill.
 There’s no such thing as lack of material but there is for every video game adaptation to the big screen, the numbers might not total up to the studios’ desire. Mostly remain duds, a handful had modest successes while only a selected few managed to hit profitability for the investors. But one very apparent reason why studios are still keen on a video game property is the largely built-in awareness such as the established characters and plot. The biggest problem however remains that a gamer might not necessarily be enticed to the movie adaptation while a movie-goer might not be interested on a movie that originates from a gaming property. Perhaps another major flaw lie with the studios, a movie adaptation normally has distanced itself greatly from the original gaming material by the time it’s released to the theatres.
 On 19 March 2009, Chun-Li will be back in “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-li” in conjunction with the 20th anniversary launch of the Capcom’s Street Fighter game. When the movie opens on 27 February 2009 in the States, the first weekend box-office hardly register a stir with only a measly US$4.6 million. Judge for yourself when the movie opens in Singapore. When all else fails, you can always rely on a certain Mr Anderson.
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