Videogames go Hollywood

By Laura Rich and Kenneth Li

(IDG) -- In Hollywood, the odds of getting hit by a car are slightly better than having your screenplay turned into a movie. So two guys adapting a book for the big screen have cooked up an idea to beat the system: Turn the book into a videogame first.

"We think it will force the studios to make it a movie," says David Baxter, who's writing a screenplay based on Verner Vinge's novel True Names with videogame pioneer Mark Pesce. "I'm hoping Tomb Raider will do well. It will show that games can trigger movies."

Baxter and Pesce aren't alone. If Tomb Raider - along with the summer's second game-based film, Final Fantasy - scores at the box office, expect a rush to produce even more videogame tie-in movies. Already a half-dozen projects are in the works, a trend that didn't go unnoticed at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the annual videogame industry confab. "There's been a real convergence between gaming and film," says former Columbia TriStar chief Chris Lee, who was set to participate in a panel discussion on the subject at E3. "Gaming has taken on the characteristics of film, and film has taken on the characteristics of gaming."

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Hollywood has tried to tap into the gaming market before, with generally dismal results. Of the movies derived from videogames, only Mortal Kombat (1995) was a genuine hit. The others - from Super Mario Brothers (1993) to Wing Commander (1999) - were bombs. (Street Fighter, released in 1994, did decent business overseas, raking in $100 million.)

Things are different today, according to game producers and their Hollywood backers. Games are more cinematic; they're voiced by Hollywood actors, scripted by screenwriters, scored by film composers and as visually ambitious as movies. Gaming itself is bigger. Today about 60 percent of Americans - 145 million - play videogames. That number will only grow with Microsoft's upcoming $500 million marketing campaign for its new game console, Xbox.

"Studios are realizing the gaming industry is getting into the living rooms of major audiences," says Rob Paris, an agent at Creative Artists Agency, which represents game publisher Valve Software. And studios, along with aspiring moviemakers like Baxter and Pesce, are betting it's a short walk from the living room to the movie theater.