A couple of years ago, Hollywood figured out that a great source to tap for stories was comic books -- the concept was proven, and for the especially popular series, the audience was built in. For years, Wizard Magazine had a feature that was essentially dream casting Hollywood adaptations of comic book movies. Being a comic book fan, I hear about projects being adapted for Hollywood, and while some definitely fall into the "can't wait to see it" category, there are also a bunch that fall into the category of "what were they thinking?"
With comic book movies, the trend that I've noticed is that first-tier comic heroes -- those popular characters that have multiple titles per month do really well, while those with just one title per month seem to tank (and quite badly, I might add). X-Men, Spiderman, Superman, and Batman for instance have more than one title a month, while characters like Catwoman, Daredevil, The Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider only have one title a month. But worse yet are movies that center on characters that don't even have their own monthly comic book titles (Elektra).
Marvel has completely used up all their available franchises with multiple titles -- what remains is a bunch of second tier comic books and spin-off characters to work with. They could do an Avengers movie, but they seem to be happy with giving Avengers members their own movie (Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, etc), and I can't think of a storyline with the Avengers that would be interesting enough for a story.
DC has the same problem. What they've got left are second string comics that don't have a huge following, which concentrate on a second tier character: Green Arrow, Green Lantern, the Flash, Aquaman.
Hollywood has also been dipping into the pool of limited series, graphic novels and non-mainstream comics to produce movies lately -- the last few years have given us The Road to Perdition
, V for Vendetta, Ghost World and Art School Confidential.
As easy as it is to create new movies based on existing franchises, it seems to me that unless Hollywood is willing to make movies based on non-mainstream properties, comic books are no longer the source for a summer blockbuster success. Games, on the other hand are becoming the next source from which to poach settings from. The Resident Evil line of games has spawned 3 movies (all of which are very loosely based on the games), while Final Fantasy has succeeded in bankrupting Square, and Tomb Raider has become synonymous with Angelina Jolie. Just as is the case with comics, there are a finite number of games worth licensing which have any kind of in-depth character, much less any with a story that feels like a story and not a game story (i.e. seek out the 7 widgets of that which will save the world, or else we're finished!).
For Hollywood, it's much more beneficial for them to create a story (and then that way they can license out the game rights), while the reverse is true for the games industry -- they'd rather Hollywood pay for the licensing rights -- they get a movie that (hopefully) raises their sales of their games, and they get Hollywood to pay them for licensing their characters, without the need to create a game that ties into the Hollywood movie (the exception being Street Fighter: The Movie: The Video Game). Comics of course, love it when they are licensed by Hollywood or Games -- both things can help their main business model, and elevate the value of their creations that much more.
There are titles in genres that deserve all three to be made, but in most cases, things only work for one or two mediums, and then require heavy adaptation for the third. For instance, imagine if the top grossing movie of all-time, Titanic was to be made into a comic book. Easily enough done. A video game, however, just wouldn't be very interesting -- it'd have to be a slew of mini-games that loosely followed the plot of movie, and ultimately, I think that's the deal-killer in movie-to-videogame adaptations -- who wants to spend 40 hours to complete a game, when they can pop in the DVD and watch the movie in 2 hours and get the same story? On the other side of equation, is that 2 hours for a movie is a short medium of entertainment -- with TV series, video games and comic books being a much longer medium with which to spin stories around, I never feel that characters are as developed in a movie as they can be in other forms of media.
On the other side of the matter, if creators can focus on the strengths of their media, while integrating factors from outside without becoming the other media, it ultimately strengthens the core product.
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