Can Video-Game Heroines Make the Leap to Big Screen?

By TOM KING
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Here's an idea: Let's spend $80 million-plus making a movie based on a
video game popular with 12-year-olds. It'll have a female action heroine
and not much plot beyond what you see on your PlayStation.

On second thought, let's make two of 'em.

That's the strange situation moviegoers are
encountering this summer, with the animated
"Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within" opening just
weeks after "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider." Not
only does that leave two similar movies to
cannibalize each other but it's making this season
a key test of how well video games translate
onto the big screen. And the media world will be watching closely, having
already placed big bets on the idea that the $6.5 billion video-game industry
and the $7.7 billion movie industry are perfectly suited for marriage.

So far, the audience for gamer movies has turned out to be much smaller
than their makers hoped. Most films based on games, including "Super
Mario Bros." and "Wing Commander," have been disappointments. Even
"Tomb Raider," despite a $48 million opening weekend, has quickly
tapered off thanks to poor word of mouth.

Next comes the genre's biggest gamble: "Final Fantasy," which Sony's
Columbia Pictures will open July 11. The $120 million movie is one of the
summer's most expensive films, costing more than "The Mummy Returns"
and "Jurassic Park 3." ("Tomb Raider," the video-game genre's box-office
champ, cost about $80 million to produce.)

Relying on Titles

The big problem is that most movies based on games go light on the plot,
rarely expanding their appeal beyond hard-core gamers. Time and again,
moviemakers cop out, thinking that a famous game title alone will be enough
to make a blockbuster.

Second problem: Movies, unlike the games on which they are based, aren't
interactive, so right off the bat they're missing their most appealing attribute.
"A lot of these games, once you take out the interactive element, aren't that
interesting," says Michael De Luca, a DreamWorks executive, who as
production chief at New Line oversaw one of the few game-to-movie
successes, "Mortal Kombat." The difference there, he says, is that "Mortal
Kombat" had "a martial-arts mythology that allowed us to get a decent story
out of it."

How "Final Fantasy" came to be
a movie is a story of a rich
Japanese company with dreams
of finding stardom in Hollywood.
The idea was hatched more than
five years ago by Hironobu
Sakaguchi, the game's creator
and an executive at Japan's
Square Co., the game's
manufacturer. (To date, more
than 33 million units of the game
have been sold.)

Square allowed Mr. Sakaguchi to direct -- even though he had never
directed a movie before. It hired Jun Aida, who had produced "Street
Fighter," a video-game-based flick starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, to
run its movie company. Square agreed to fund 100% of the production
costs, and got Columbia to cover marketing and most distribution.

Soon, Square began writing checks, hiring a big cast of star talent; actress
Ming-Na of TV's "ER" voices the lead role of Aki, with Alec Baldwin,
Steve Buscemi, Donald Sutherland and James Woods also providing
voices.

One of the biggest expenses: building a $45 million animation studio in
Honolulu. Animators who had worked on films such as "The Matrix" and
"Toy Story" were hired for a job that would last four years.

What they created looks pretty cool -- the animated characters have lifelike
features. Animation nuts will probably get a kick out of seeing such things as
the moisture in the characters' eyes and the natural-looking way their
clothing moves. The characters don't look like specific movie stars, but have
perfect movie-star looks. Says producer Chris Lee: "There's a lot of eye
candy in the movie."

The plot seems less groundbreaking. Instead of a broad story that could
expand the appeal far beyond gamers, Square settled on a familiar sci-fi
plot: It's the year 2065, Earth has been invaded by aliens, and it's up to a
few remaining humans to save the world. Ho-hum.

Another problem: In a move the producers couldn't have known would take
the edge off their film's originality, they opted to make their action star a
woman. But "Tomb Raider" got there first. It was able to cash in because
the Lara Croft character already had a huge fan base from the game. Also,
the buff actress playing her, Angelina Jolie, has a strong appeal with male
viewers. "Final Fantasy's" heroine is an animated unknown.

"As a producer, I'm always nervous before a movie opens," says Mr. Aida,
who heads Square Pictures. "But so far the reaction has been very positive,
and I'm convinced that even people who have no experience with 'Final
Fantasy' will be able to understand and enjoy the movie."

Something About Harry

Hollywood executives were stunned this week as billboards for "Harry
Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" began popping up in 10 major cities.

That's unusual for a film that won't open for another five months. Typically,
outdoor advertising for movies doesn't begin until eight weeks or so before
a film's opening. And in the rare cases where studios begin the ad campaign
early, it's normally for films with little advance buzz.

That's certainly not the case with "Harry Potter," which has enormous name
recognition. "What's the point?" one rival marketing executive asks. "It
seems to me to be a waste of money; they might as well take a pile of dollar
bills out into the street and light them on fire."

But Warner Bros., which made the movie, says it wants to make sure the
message gets out to folks who haven't read the Harry Potter books, as well
as those fanatics who have memorized every word.

"We have had a 'less is more' strategy going back to the beginning of the
year," says Dawn Taubin, a top marketing exec at Warners, explaining that
this is the film's first significant advertising. Ms. Taubin says the outdoor ads,
which will be posted for only a month, are a companion to the "Harry
Potter" trailer, which will run in most theaters playing "A.I." this weekend.

Please share your thoughts with me about the movies as well as any
questions you have about Hollywood. Write to me at [email protected]. I
will answer selected questions in this space.

Video-Game Movieland

Here's a list of movies that were also video games, along with their domestic box-office gross.

Movie (year)
Gross (in millions)
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)
$87.8*
Pokemon: The Movie 2000 (2000)
43.7
Pokemon: The First Movie (1999)
85.7
Wing Commander (1999)
11.6
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
35.9
Mortal Kombat (1995)
70.4
Street Fighter (1994)
33.4
Super Mario Bros. (1993)
20.9


* Still in release

Source: Exhibitor Relations Co.

Interesting stuff, but you probably don't want to repost articles in full. The Free Republic lost a lawsuit over it.

I think the reason Mortal Kombat was "succesful"
was the fact that they realized that they had no
story whatsoever and therefore actually spent some
time developing one that would work in a movie
instead of going with the extremely lackluster
story of the game.

Where's Double Dragon?

I wish we could break the "12 year olds" stereotype that surrounds video games. How many surveys and statisics have to be published saying the average age of gamers is something around 28 years old before the media stops saying we're all 12 year olds.

And don't say "they mean 12 years old intellectually speaking" either, because they don't, they mean it quite literally; and even so, they'd be wrong. Gamers are generally smarter than non-gamers.

At least he had the reason why these movies suck correct. Hollywood is stupid and most script-writers couldn't write their way out of a "See Dick Run" book.

I think it's worth noting that Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within isn't really a video game movie. It doesn't share plot, characters, setting, or hell even writers with any of the video games. It might as well have just been called The Spirits Within, but Square wants to use the movie to raise brand awareness for the games (instead of the other way around).

It's also a bit of a different financial case than most game movies. The movie studio usually fronts all the money for a movie based on a game, so if Tomb Raider the movie has a side effect of selling a bunch of Tomb Raider the game, the movie studio doesn't give a crap.

In Final Fantasy's case, Square footed most of the money for the movie (it caused them to show their first yearly loss ever). So the actual movie maker stands to benefit from selling more games.

Yeah, that's what the Square execs were telling the shareholders about the FF movie. One of the goals of the film was to increase brand awareness for the games and they beleive they've succeeded in that respect. And it doesn't hurt that Columbia's the one who payed for all the marketing. Still a really expensive endevor, I know I'd be a little annoyed if I had a financial stake in the company, one which has been consistantly profitable its entire life, but is now posting losses. On the plus side it won't be as expensive to make future CG films 'cause they won't have to build a brand new facility for each picture.

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Quote:

Still a really expensive endevor, I know I'd be a little annoyed if I had a financial stake in the company, one which has been consistantly profitable its entire life, but is now posting losses.

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Wel, I think with Wallstreet you're only talking to people who make all there money from rising stock prices. It doesn't matter what a company is doing, just which way the stock is headed. Thats why the whole economic downturn thing we've been having lately annoys me so much. It wasn't about eanings, or the weakening of the tech sector or any of that crap, it was about all these hundreds of dot com companies that went public without a buisness model to stand on. Every jackass with a made up word and $70 could register a domain name and call it a company. People were in a hurry to get rich and, after all, the internet is the future, so these stock prices go through the roof. But then you look around and ask, "hey, how does this company make money?" Of course no one has the answer because no one had had thought that far ahead and it starts a panic. Investor start cashing out as fast as they can, but people are stupid and think dot com=tech so solid companies like MS and AMD and whatnot get dragged down too. So a buch of those dot coms should have gone out of buisness, but what's bad for professional investors is bad for everybody, it turns out. I think I've gone off on a tangent.

Anyway, in the case of Squaresoft I think it is seen as a really dependable investment. It has no problem making money creating videogames. And, well, it really doesn't need to be making movies.

Plus I think, in general, that a comapny has to reinvest is seen as a sign that they were doing something wrong.

Brad Grenz