By Jack Holmes

With this year’s E3 reveals now out of the way, we thought it was prime time to take a closer look at the current video game landscape, and more specifically, its tie-ins with the movie industry.

This year, Assassin’s Creed will make its big screen debut, and the classic video game franchise will make the leap from console to the cinema like so many franchises before. It’s a brave move considering 2015’s Hitman: Agent 47, which attempted to reboot the Hitman franchise back in August. The original drew almost entirely negative reviews from sites such as Metacritic who gave the movie a measely 35%. Perhaps if the reboot had been successful, more video game movies might not seem like such a bad idea. However, the sequel actually fared worse with only 28% on Metacritic, and a shocking 8% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Perhaps we’re concentrating a little too much on the past though. Perhaps the issue with the current video game to movie adaptations spawns from their chosen source material.  But if not Hitman, which franchises deserve the silver screen treatment? Here are my suggestions.

Gears of War
Most of the time Gears of War games feel like they’re more film than video game, so why not simply give the franchise that extra push onto the big screen?

Imagine emergence day, the day when a huge underground civilisation emerge from below to overthrow humanity and take the surface for their own. Humanity’s only chance of survival is by using military satellites to laser these ‘Locust’, as they come to be known. From here on, our film would have us follow the remaining humans fighting a desperate war against the merciless creatures from below. If San Andreas can make a profit from earthquakes alone, adding monsters has blockbuster written all over it, right?

Bioshock
Bioshock’s big selling point was always its setting, and a movie would be no different. The story revolves around a 1940s underwater utopia, created to house the best and brightest of mankind, far away from government oppression and all those silly guidelines and rules. However, not surprisingly, things don’t exactly go to plan and when the protagonist of our story encounters the city in the 60s, it’s in ruins, with a population largely turned into psychotic ‘splicers’, as well as its looming wardens, The Big Daddys. Trust me, they’re creepier than they sound.

The film could easily be adapted to a sci-fi horror, one part Equilibrium, one part The Crazies, and might even go as far as to incorporate some of the clever twists, turns and reveals that the video game series has thrived on.

Dead Space

Who doesn’t want a gory horror set in space where alien zombies must be held at bay with only the tools found aboard a mining ship? The games were a combination of The Thing and the original Amityville Horror, with a nice dose of sci-fi to keep it interesting, a perfect blend for a horror film. There were rumours of a movie surfacing at the time of Dead Space 2’s release. However, after the disappointing sales of the third instalment of the game, it seemed as if the movie’s hopes were all but dead (get it?). It’s difficult to think of a movie that’s strayed into the territory of gory space zombies before, and if the fans still want it, I’d say it’s about time.

What video game franchise do you think deserves its own movie, or even its own movie franchise? Let us know at @HumanityHallows or at @Holmesblogs