Hit or miss, movie adaptations of video games are here to stay

Has Hollywood learned nothing from Uwe Boll, the Ed Wood of Germany? Boll, who just received a special Razzie Award for a lifetime of schlock, has built his career on film adaptations of video games. At present, he's creating BloodRayne 3 (vampires fighting Nazis!), having not been discouraged by a sub-$4 million worldwide gross and straight-to-DVD release for chapters 1 and 2.
  Tomorrow, the latest video game to become a movie will open, as Twentieth Century Fox launches Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li. It's the built-in awareness that make these properties attractive to film studios that need a ready marketing hook and established group of fans. Sometimes it works (Tomb Raider, Mortal Kombat), and often it doesn't. Remember Wing Commander and Postal? Don't feel bad, nobody does.
  Street Fighter, which follows a successful '94 version starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, could get killed this weekend by Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience, but there are several more projects in this vein in the works, like Clock Tower 3. The new news is that they've started to attract higher-profile filmmakers, including Pirates of the Caribbean's Gore Verbinski, who's directing Bioshock, and action master Jerry Bruckheimer, who's producing Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.
  Not sure why, but there seems to be little interest in adaptations of Wii Fit games. Tennis, anyone?

—Posted by T.L. Stanley