Does it? Let’s be honest, the biggest reason the movie succeeded was because Markiplier made it, one of the most popular gaming influencers. If it were a movie made by random people the internet doesn’t know, it probably wouldn’t have done too well. It’s like saying the FNAF movie proves people want more 5/10 horror movies.
I’m glad it worked out for him and I do want to see more indie movies, but this isn’t indicative of much.
I guarantee 99% of people didn’t even know it was based on a game. Yes, he does have a following, but honestly not anywhere near big enough to explain the global sensation it’s become on his own.
So yes, you may have to establish some sort of following on your own before publishing a smash hit indie film, but there’s thousands of passionate people who have a similar following.
After a certain amount of publicity things can be self sustaining.
Getting it over that hump is a lot easier for someone like Markiplier.
My wife and I are planning to see the movie this weekend, and I play a lot of games. This is the first I’ve heard that it’s based on a game.
“Hey this worked for him so let’s all try beating this horse to death now.” - movies now
Obviously it wasn’t perfect; it had flaws. There are scenes I would have edited differently, some parts were murky, and some lines wholly redundant. But despite the flaws, it felt fresh. It didn’t feel like Hollywood. Felt like a passion project.
I would like to see more movies with this level of scope.
What if the reason why videogame movies have been failing all this time is because they keep giving them to awful directors who just make them for german tax writeoffs.
Honestly I think the bigger reason is that most games are more suited to a miniseries or full TV show.
Also Use Boll “retired” in 2016, and while he has still done some film work since, he has stopped cranking out bad videogame movies.
Recent stuff like Minecraft, Uncharted, Gran Turismo were “meh” instead of “terrible”. TV shows like Arcane, Cyberpunk Edge Runners, Castlevania, Fallout, and The Last of Us have been pretty well received. Heck, the first season of the Witcher was really good. The Mario movie did well enough that they made a sequel, and are making a Zelda movie.
Not to mention other cross-media franchises. Marvel has been gigantic. D&D has had several videogames and movies over the years of varying quality. Warhammer is getting a TV show. Pokemon has been a gigantic mess of good, bad, and mediocre media of all kinds. Star Wars too.
I think this boils down to people want to see more passion projects.
That being said, I’m personally in the indie dev and somewhat in the indie film space and so I’m hugely biased and hope we see more things headed in this direction.
Iron Lung proves there’s room for more indie
gamefilmsI’ve often dreamed of a Save the Date (visual novel by paperdino) film, because that game does some amazing exploration of what it means to interact with fiction.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen anyone else reference Save the Date. It’s one of my favorite visual novels despite its simplicity, and was a prime example of metafiction years before games like Undertale and DDLC made it popular.
