Jean-Julien Baronnet, who is producing the upcoming Assassin’s Creed movie, recently left his position as CEO of Ubisoft Motion Pictures in order to start a new production company called Marla Studios which will focus on video game film adaptations.
Assassin’s Creed‘s success will be a good indicator of whether Baronnet is making a good decision in taking on a blending of industries which have not necessarily always mixed well with one another. Movies based on video games have a history of being abysmal.
Even though Warcraft grossed 300 million dollars more than its 165 million dollar budget, most of the sales were in China–one of the most Warcraft crazed places in the world. Warcraft received largely negative reviews. So, whether you want to judge success on how much money a film makes or the film’s actual quality will determine if a movie is a hit.
Baronnet stated in an interview with Variety that he will be collaborating with figures in both the gaming and film industries in order to capture what is necessary to make a truly great video game adaptation. Baronnet lists three factors that will help Marla Studios become the new model for producing video game movies.
- Determining what the best artistic angle is to serve the IPs that are being adapted.
- Negotiating with Hollywood production companies in order to give the game companies creative control and high payback.
- Collaborating with individuals from the game’s parent company at each stage of production.
A reality where video game movies aren’t completely terrible seems as if it will take a long time to realize. Even if Assassin’s Creed is a huge success, it means that other studios will start noticing the gold mine that is the video game industry, and we will probably start seeing a bunch of different video game movies similar to the boom of superhero films in the recent years; this isn’t necessarily a good thing.
There has been a slew of bad superhero movies which emerged out of the hype around hero flicks, I’m looking at you Green Lantern and Fantastic Four. Hopefully, Marla Studios will be able to pull video game films out of the slump which they’ve been in. The potential for good films based on video games is enormous, and if done right, we could see a new generation of collaboration.
