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Some video games are best off staying video games, and Grand Theft Auto is one example as an immersive game with multiple storylines; another would be Alan Wake, which is conceived as a mystery thriller series, divided into episodes, and it works best in that format. Finally, the Mass Effect trilogy would be better as a TV series, not only because of its extensive lore and massive world, but also because its space opera epic storyline would be hard to translate into just one feature film, no matter how long.
Yet, there are games that would be amazing as feature films because not everyone plays or likes video games, though almost everyone likes a good movie. This is the case with the beautiful Ghost of Tsushima, which is currently in development and directed by John Wick creator Chad Stahelski (slay), and with BioShock, in development at Netflix. Whether for their great stories, interesting perspectives, or fun worlds and lore, these ten video games could be adapted into extremely successful movies.
10 ‘Disco Elysium’ (2019)
Director Idea: David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky
If David Lynch were still alive, he would be a great ideator of a movie based on Disco Elysium, one of the best role-playing games of the past decade. Disco Elysium is special because of its artwork and dark story, and the protagonist is an antihero whose personality is tailored according to his in-game actions and dialogue decisions. Games with multiple outcomes are difficult to adapt to screen because people often disagree on the outcomes themselves; one group prefers one, another prefers something else—finding a universally liked ending might be tough.
Yet, Disco Elysium, if approached correctly, could be the next great Zodiac or Black Swan—that’s why someone like David Fincher or Darren Aronofsky would make this story come to life. Disco Elysium follows an experienced alcoholic detective who has no memory of his identity or life; he meets a detective from another precinct, Kim Kitsuragi, a by-the-book detective with great analytical skills. While discovering who the main character is, the player also solves a crime that’s been plaguing a small community of Martinaise in the politically torn city called Revachol. Disco Elysium is dialogue-heavy, with little combat, and it’s an incredibly deep and moving story; it’s a game worth going through, and one that would make a great movie.
9 ‘Spec Ops: The Line’ (2012)
Director Ideas: Ridley Scott, Alex Garland
If you’ve played Spec Ops: The Line, you know it’s not just a simple game about war. This game is, for lack of a better word, devastating, but if you don’t like playing war games, you could try watching a playthrough of it on YouTube because it’s something else. The game came out in 2012, which was an amazing year for video games overall, seeing the releases of Far Cry 3, Dishonored, Mass Effect 3, and Sleeping Dogs, among many others. All of them have something unexplainable, a hue, and storytelling and directing that’s hard to replicate in modern video gaming.
Spec Ops: The Line follows a trio of Delta Force special operatives led by Captain Martin Walker; they descend into a post-apocalyptic Dubai for a recon mission. The further they go, the objective changes, and the more you play the game, Walker becomes less stable and experiences intense hallucinations that uncover horrors of war. The game was inspired by film and literary works, specifically Joseph Conrad‘s novella Heart of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola‘s movie Apocalypse Now. With the recent feverish experience, Warfare, Alex Garland could tackle Spec Ops, but Ridley Scott, the director of one of the best war movies out there—Black Hawk Down—might make a great story out of this, too. Either way, it would have to be a director who can make the story as brilliant and heavy as the game is.
8 ‘Twelve Minutes’ (2021)
Director Ideas: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Rian Johnson
Annapurna Interactive is known for releasing brilliant indie games that often drive their players to think and put their judgment aside. Twelve Minutes is one of those games, and it’s fully feature film material, from its existing voice cast—James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe—to its incredibly twisty and devastating premise. The game’s director and creator, Luís António, was inspired by Stanley Kubrick‘s adaptation of The Shining, in particular its visual appeal, and has based a lot of Twelve Minutes‘ design on its aesthetic. He could also be a great director for this because of his pre-existing vision, but we can see someone like Alejandro González Iñárritu and Rian Johnson tackling this visually and story-wise.
Twelve Minutes is a game set in a small apartment, observed from a bird’s-eye view. The protagonist is the unnamed husband (McAvoy), who welcomes his wife (Ridley) home from work. They have dinner and a conversation, and then a mysterious man (Dafoe) knocks on their door, introduces himself as a police officer, and accuses the wife of killing her father about seven years ago. The situation escalates, and the game seemingly ends, but the player returns to the same event, twelve minutes ago, now free to explore through point-and-click gameplay. The point is to find clues and unlock questions to uncover a deeper mystery, which is an incredible story full of dark and unusual turns. A movie based on Twelve Minutes would be an amazing experience, no doubt about it.
7 ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops’ (2010)
Director Idea: James Mangold
Call of Duty: Black Ops is a greatly loved branch of the Call of Duty franchise, mostly because of its historical setting and superstar voice cast. Sam Worthington, Ice Cube, Ed Harris, and Gary Oldman comprise the biggest names among them, though we have some video game favorites in there, too, like the legendary Fred Tatasciore. A director like James Mangold, who’s tackled action movies thus far, would make a great CoD: Black Ops feature that would honor the source material, look as stunning as the game, and become the next great spy thriller.
CoD: Black Ops follows the CIA operative and former Marine Captain Alex Mason (Worthington) as he leads a team usually consisting of two other operatives into covert black operation missions behind enemy lines. The game takes place between 1961 and 1968, following the Cold War and the Vietnam War, and it’s a globetrotting operation. Action movies with special ops are always popular and people just love a good action flick with a great story; GameRant ranked it second out of all 26 CoD campaigns, and many fans agree it has one of the more compelling stories that doesn’t just become a self-indulgent savior story.
Director Idea: Danny Boyle
The Metal Gear Solid lore has a lot of weird and beautiful elements, mostly due to creator Hideo Kojima‘s creative direction. There are some truly baffling moments, while others turn out profoundly philosophical and deep, but that’s not always a bad thing. Metal Gear Solid, overall, has brilliant potential to be made for the big screen, since Kojima is an aspiring filmmaker and lover of film in general; the longest cutscene in any MGS game is 71 minutes long and serves as the conclusion to Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots.
It’s hard to pick which MGS would be the best to adapt to film, but if one had to be chosen, it would be MGS3: Snake Eater. It’s the origin story of Big Boss, aka Naked Snake, the biggest hero—and antihero—of the MGS campaign, and it would make a perfect starting point for a potential film franchise. MGS3 is set in 1963 and follows covert operative Naked Snake as he’s placed in a jungle in the USSR, where the scientist Nikolai Sokolov is held hostage; Snake has to extract Sokolov from the base. For Snake himself, it’s a formative story filled with brilliant twists and turns. An MGS3 movie should be a little bit feverish to induce the feeling of being in the jungle for a long time; someone like Danny Boyle could honor this story greatly and make it uniquely his.
5 ‘Deus Ex: Human Revolution’ (2011)
Director Idea: Guillermo del Toro
Deus Ex is one of the most beloved video game franchises, and while the third installment, Human Revolution, isn’t generally the best-rated of them all, it is a pretty sick and beautiful game with a great story. Because of that, it would make a great movie overall, and someone like Guillermo del Toro would do it justice both visually and in terms of honoring the source material. He could even make the game feel a little bit like horror because it has the potential to be more than just a great sci-fi film. Human Revolution was critically praised for its plot, storytelling, and freedom of choice; it’s another story where players’ choices influence the game’s events, so as great as it would be on film, it would be tricky.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution is set in 2027 and follows Adam Jensen, a security specialist at Sarif Industries, a company that develops “augmentations,” or artificial organs. After the Sarif Industries headquarters is attacked and Jensen is severely wounded, he gets patched up by Sarif with “augmentations” and is later sent to investigate the organization behind the attack. Visually, the game feels like cyberpunk meeting the Renaissance; the game’s art director, Jonathan Jacques-Belletête, was inspired by Rembrandt and used a lot of black and gold to offset the dystopian setting. It’s visually stunning and a brilliant story that would be so cool on the big screen if the same influences were to be used.
4 ‘Resident Evil 4’ (2005)
Director Idea: Leigh Whannell, Gareth Evans
One of the greatest video games of all time is Resident Evil 4, and many of its fans agree that a movie adaptation is long overdue. This game has some of the most iconic characters in video gaming, including the US President’s daughter, Ashley Graham, and her savior, government agent Leon S. Kennedy, with Leon being the biggest and greatest action hero of the franchise itself. Resident Evil 4 has a brilliant and captivating conspiracy thriller/action story, and a director like Leigh Whannell would make it into a brilliant feature film due to his history with horror, action, and even sci-fi. Gareth Evans could also try himself out in this, making it more of an action thriller with intense fights.
Resident Evil 4 follows Leon as he’s sent on a mission to rescue the US President’s kidnapped daughter, Ashley. With time, Leon finds out she’s being held captive in a Spanish village by a mysterious and ominous cult. While there, Leon uncovers a conspiracy against the President himself, learning that Ashley is only intended to be a tool in reaching world domination. As one of the GOAT video games, Resident Evil 4 has great potential to be a successful feature film just because of its popularity, though the story is also solid and very entertaining.
3 ‘Dishonored’ (2012)
Director Idea: Mike Flanagan
Dishonored is one of the most beloved games out there and one often voted as the most eligible for a great film adaptation. Many fans would love to see the world of Dishonored set up on the big screen, where the industrial London-inspired setting would really shine. Corvo Attano ranks among the greatest game heroes of all time, with his amazing stealth and combat skills, supernatural powers, and unusual gadgets, so the right actor would have to be carefully selected; as far as a director goes, it would be nice to see Mike Flanagan try to bring this story to life, since people often claim Dishonored is partly a horror game; still, Flanagan isn’t only skilled in horror—a lot of his work features intricate and powerful storytelling, perfect for Dishonored.
Dishonored is set in Dunwall, an industrial city where supernatural things coexist with technological advancements. The story follows Corvo Attano, Empress Jessamine’s personal bodyguard; when an ambush takes place and the court is attacked by mysterious raiders, the Empress is killed, her daughter kidnapped, and Corvo framed for the murder. Now dishonored and considered a traitor, Corvo must eliminate the conspirators before they take over the Empress’ realm. It’s fun, powerful, and deep, outlining themes like honor, truth, and justice—a perfect kind of summer blockbuster.
2 ‘Mafia (The Definitive Edition)’ (2020)
Director Idea: Martin Scorsese
The Mafia games are among the first playable gangster stories, gaining loads of popularity over time and critical acclaim for great storytelling, lore, and gameplay. The 2020 Mafia remaster gave the game a new life and is today one of the most visually stunning video games out there. The brand-new depiction of Lost Heaven, Illinois (the fictional town where the game takes place), was remade with incredible attention to detail, and the story was given a deserving setting. A Mafia movie would be an incredibly successful film because, let’s face it—everyone loves a good gangster movie.
The first Mafia game follows Lost Heaven cab driver Tommy Angelo, who gets ambushed by the Salieri crime family members, Paulie and Sam; they’re running from a rival gang and need Tommy to escape them. With that, his friendship with Paulie and Sam begins, and so does his induction into the Salieri crime family. Mafia is full of intense shootouts, car chases, and plot twists, and a gangster story that would be perfect for the big screen. Considering the two other remastered Mafia parts, the movie could also be an anthology trilogy, though Mafia 3 would make a better TV series instead. The best director for a gangster story like Mafia would be none other than the incomparable Martin Scorsese.
1 ‘Red Dead Redemption (1 and 2)’ (2010-’18)
Director Ideas: The Coen Brothers, Denis Villeneuve
While Rockstar Games are made to be as film-like as possible, a great and faithful adaptation of one of their games would still slap, because who doesn’t love a good Western? Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2 are perfect material for the silver screen because of their captivating and immersive storylines. In itself, Red Dead Redemption is beautiful; both games, especially the second one, have the cinematic camera experience that Rockstar includes in most of its games, and enjoying RDR2 in its cutscenes with the cinematic mode is a great way to feel like you’re already watching a movie.
Still, we can’t help but feel that it would just be an amazing movie, too. Yes, Rockstar’s games double as cinematic experiences, but they also provide a lot of material for talented directors and filmmakers to create their own perspectives. The Coen Brothers would give this story justice, as they often make Westerns and understand what makes them appealing; a wild card would be someone like Denis Villeneuve, who may not have had a chance to do a Western but would honor the beauty and appeal of Red Dead Redemption with his directing style and visual storytelling.
KEEP READING: These 10 Video Games Would Be Even Better as Anime Series
