Having already turned 40-year-old Disneyland theme park ride Pirates Of The Caribbean into a cinematic blockbuster, Hollywood screenwriter Stuart Beattie (above) now has his sights set on doing the same thing with videogames. He penned the script for the upcoming adaptation of Gears Of War, and also completed a new Halo movie script during last year’s Hollywood writers’ strike. We spoke to him about the future of films based on videogames and his apparently leading role in it.

How do you think Hollywood’s acceptance of games has evolved over the years?

I really don’t think Hollywood’s fully accepted videogames as source material yet, simply because there hasn’t been a true bona-fide hit based on a videogame. I think it’s still something people will dabble with until there’s that first huge hit. And then there will be the rush of new games to the big screen just as we’reseeing now with comic books.

So, despite games selling millions of units, it’s still difficult to get green-lights for them?

Hollywood’s a numbers business, so we’re just waiting for the big game hit to open up the wave. For those of us who know how great games are for source material in Hollywood, we’re all scrambling to try to make that big game movie.

Why do you think so many game adaptations have failed?

Because they’ve been made by people who don’t play games or don’t know them or don’t even like games. Videogames are too new for many in Hollywood to grasp. In Hollywood, the people in charge of green-lighting films don’t play videogames. They’re not of that generation.



What do you think will happen as the gaming generation gets older?

As our generation moves up Hollywood’s corporate ladder, hopefully that’s when you’ll see a lot more of these movies get made and made very well. Within ten years it’ll be all videogame movies, just like you’re seeing the flood of comic book movies now. The comic book movies are all based on people who grew up with them in the ’80s. They get the spirit and essence of them and they adapt them faithfully. That’s not the case right now with videogames.

What are videogame movie producers doing wrong?

They don’t understand what makes the game great and they don’t know how to translate that. Also, not every game should be a film – you have to know what’s going to make a great cinematic experience versus a great gaming experience. A lot of videogame movies try to adapt the game, and you can’t nine times out of ten because they’re designed inherently differently. You have to find the great story in the game and that’s hard – not every game has that story. Pirates Of The Caribbean had its challenges, but in a way it was easier than a game in the sense that there was no story. It was just a series of images, so I was free to create my own story and my own characters and just put bits of the ride in.