Topline
These are the highest grossing film adaptations of video games, but despite raking in hundreds of millions at the box office, most of these films failed to make a mark with critics, a trend that major studios have repeatedly tried to reverse for decades.
“Five Nights at Freddy’s” has just a 26% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. (Universal Pictures via … [+] AP)
Key Facts
Adapting popular video games into film can be a successful financial strategy for film studios, thanks to the established fanbases the games already have, but almost all of these films struggled to impress critics.
Though many video game films have succeeded at the box office, most have a “rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes—meaning fewer than 60% of critics gave these movies positive reviews.
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is the highest-grossing video game adaptation by a huge margin, making $1.36 billion at the box office this year, but even that film has just a 59% “rotten” score on Rotten Tomatoes.
The latest video game adaptation to hit theaters, Five Nights at Freddy’s, won’t be reversing this trend: It has just a 26% score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Highest Grossing (worldwide) Video Game Film Adaptations
- The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023): $1,361,772,504, 59% Rotten Tomatoes
- Pokémon: Detective Pikachu (2019): $450,062,638, 68% Rotten Tomatoes
- Warcraft (2016): $439,048,914, 29% Rotten Tomatoes
- Rampage (2018): $428,128,233, 51% Rotten Tomatoes
- Uncharted (2022): $407,141,258, 40% Rotten Tomatoes
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022): $405,421,518, 69% Rotten Tomatoes
- The Angry Birds Movie (2016): $352,333,929, 44% Rotten Tomatoes
- Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2010): $336,365,676, 36% Rotten Tomatoes
- Sonic The Hedgehog (2020): $319,715,683, 63% Rotten Tomatoes
- Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016): $312,242,626, 38% Rotten Tomatoes
Big Number
23. That’s how many video game film adaptations have grossed more than $100 million at the global box office, according to data from The Numbers, a film industry research firm. Of these 23 films, just four have a “fresh” rating (a critics’ score of 60% or higher) on Rotten Tomatoes. All of those four—The Angry Birds Movie 2 (73% critics’ score), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (69% critics’ score), Pokemon: Detective Pikachu (68% critics’ score) and Sonic the Hedgehog (63% critics’ score)—were released in the past four years.
News Peg
Five Nights at Freddy’s, the latest video game to be adapted into film, opened in theaters on October 27, one day after it was released on Peacock. The film, produced by Universal Pictures, stars Josh Hutcherson as a nighttime security guard at an entertainment center where the animatronic figures come alive and try to kill him. The movie debuted to negative reviews, scoring just 26% on Rotten Tomatoes. Despite the poor reviews—and the film’s simultaneous release on streaming—it’s expected to be a box office hit. Deadline projected the film will gross more than $50 million in its opening weekend at the domestic box office. The film grossed $10.3 million in Thursday previews, Deadline reported, which it noted is just $200,000 behind major hit Oppenheimer’s Thursday preview total.
Key Background
Film studios have tried to make video game films a success since 1993, when Hollywood Pictures released Super Mario Bros., a financial and critical failure that is sometimes listed among the worst films of all time. It has a 29% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it grossed $20 million in the United States—less than half of its $48 million budget. Rotten Tomatoes wrote the failure of Super Mario Bros. paved the way for a “long legacy of questionable choices, troubled productions, and gamers’ pixel tears left in their wake,” but “the studios keep on trying” to make video game films land with critics. Most attempts, however, have been unsuccessful. The popular Resident Evil game series spawned a film franchise, which has seven installments released between 2002 and 2021—but the highest-rated film, Resident Evil: Extinction, has just a 37% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Other video game adaptations that bombed on Rotten Tomatoes include Tekken (0% score), Assassin’s Creed (18% score), Street Fighter (11% score) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (20% score).
Tangent
Jack Wentworth-Weedon, cinema events coordinator at the United Kingdom’s National Science and Media Museum, suggested video game adaptations may struggle to resonate with viewers because it removes the element of interactivity and the ability of people to control the storyline. Viewers may also be turned off by unfaithfulness to the source material, which Wentworth-Weedon wrote often occurs because games have too much plot to fit into a single film. Cara Ellison, a video game narrative designer, told the Guardian good films have concise scripts, while “big-brand franchise games, the ones film studios think they can make brand recognition money from, are at least 15 hours long,” making it difficult to write a film adaptation that will please fans of the original game.
Contra
The Last of Us, an HBO series adaptation of the popular post-apocalyptic video game, was a major hit with critics. The series has a 96% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 478 reviews, and the critics’ consensus states it “ranks among the all-time greatest video game adaptations.” The series scored 24 nominations at the upcoming Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony.
Further Reading
Movie adaptations of video games are still mostly terrible. Why has no one cracked the code? (The Guardian)
51 Video Game Movies Ranked by Tomatometer (Rotten Tomatoes)
