Hollywood studios need a replacement for superheroes. With deals for "Call of Duty" and other properties, they see video games as having a big pull for younger viewers and moviegoers.
Recently, film adaptations of video games have proved to be big business. The top-grossing adaptation ever is 2023’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” from Universal Pictures, Illumination Entertainment and Nintendo, which garnered more than $1.3 billion in global box office revenue, followed by this spring’s surprise hit “A Minecraft Movie,” which hauled in almost $958 million worldwide.The 2023 cult horror hit “Five Nights at Freddy’s” scored with Gen Z, bringing in $291 million. Tapping into the video game industry is not a new phenomenon — after all, the first, though widely panned, film adaptation of the Nintendo game “Super Mario Bros.” was released in 1993.Video games ended up falling into the same category as toys and board games, all seen as properties that weren’t serious propositions for the screen. Now, that’s all changed. In an era when the decades-old Barbie doll is a billion-dollar box office hit and shows like HBO’s “The Last of Us,” based on the Naughty Dog game, and Amazon MGM Studios’ “Fallout,” based on the Bethesda game franchise, are critically acclaimed, studios see all of these as intellectual property worth mining.“Call of Duty” joins a long list of video game adaptations, particularly in the last few years, when gaming properties including “The Last of Us,” “Twisted Metal,” “Minecraft” and “Super Mario Bros.” have all hit screens.