Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer has said that more movies based on gaming properties owned by the company will get adapted into movies and TV shows in the future. Speaking to Variety, Spencer spoke about learning from the mistakes made with the TV adaptation of Halo, and how the company now has more confidence with adaptations moving forward.
“We’re learning and growing through this process, which is giving us more confidence that we should do more,” said Spencer. “We learned from doing Halo. We learned from doing Fallout. So all of these build on themselves. And obviously we’ll have a couple that miss. But what I’d say to the Xbox community that likes this work is, ‘You’re going to see more, because we’re gaining confidence and we’re learning through this.’”
The statement from Spencer comes leading up to the theatrical release of A Minecraft Movie. The movie’s title, according to Legendary’s chairman of worldwide production Mary Parent, comes from the fact that Minecraft as a game doesn’t have a singular story to it. Rather, owing to the title’s sandbox nature, there are many possible stories that can be told through it.
“We’re calling it ‘A Minecraft Movie’ because we’re respecting the fact that there’s no one story that drives the game,” said Parent to variety.
A Minecraft Movie had been in production for quite some time. The first mentions of a movie based on the game being in production came all the way back in 2014, before Minecraft developer Mojang was even acquired by Microsoft.
As for Halo‘s adaptation, the show got two seasons before ultimately being cancelled by Paramount+. The cancellation came in light of the heavy criticism faced by the TV show. Aside from Halo, however, other adaptations of video games have been seeing quite a bit of success. Other than the massive franchise that the Sonic the Hedgehog movies have turned into, there have also been critically acclaimed TV adaptations of The Last of Us (via HBO) and Fallout (via Amazon Prime).
The success of the Fallout adaptation was notable enough that it saw many players, new and returning, play games from throughout the franchise. Fallout 76 creative director Jon Rush spoke about this recently, saying that players were going all the way back to titles like Fallout 3.
“The game continues to be a success,” said Rush about Fallout 76. “We definitely saw a lot of success last year with the release of the show and the show kind of casting a bit of a spotlight on all the Fallout IP. So, there were people hopping into Fallout 3, 4, 76. 76 is still thriving, it’s still growing. We have more ideas than we could possibly ever do and have no plans to stop. We’re going to continue supporting this game, continue supporting our players and telling the story. There’s never been a better time to adventure with your friends in the wasteland.”
The Last of Us, on the other hand, is set to premier its second season on April 13. Leading up to the first episode of its second season, a new trailer was released for the show.
