As Hollywood courts gamers with Super Mario sequel and more, they warn: ‘Don’t ruin this’

LOS ANGELES – “Chicken jockey!” was a rallying cry.

Movie theatres erupted when American actor Jack Black’s character uttered that gaming lingo in 2025’s A Minecraft Movie. Fans clambered onto one another’s shoulders. Police officers escorted out the rowdiest disrupters. In at least one screening, someone smuggled in a live chicken.

The mayhem was a symbol of the potential payoff when gamers see the tiniest details of their favourite franchises lovingly presented on the big screen.

While movie studios have adapted video games for decades – with varying degrees of success – the recent box-office triumphs of films like A Minecraft Movie (US$961 million or S$1.24 billion), The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023, US$1.36 billion) and the cult horror Five Nights At Freddy’s (2023, US$292 million) have Hollywood excitedly raiding a treasure chest of intellectual property.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is now showing in cinemas, with new films in the Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil and Street Fighter universes also coming in 2026.

The feature debuts of two mega franchises, the first-person shooter Call Of Duty and the fantasy epic The Legend Of Zelda, are in development with prominent directors. And even niche indie games like the neo-noir vampire mystery El Paso, Elsewhere are being snapped up for scripts.

But video game adaptations can still flop, and it has become clear that flourishing requires appealing to a game’s native audience.

Zach Cregger, who is writing and directing the 2026 horror reboot Resident Evil after breaking through with Barbarian (2022) and Weapons (2025), said in an e-mail that he warily crosses his arms whenever he hears of a project inspired by a game he loves.

“I’m like, ‘Don’t ruin this for me,’” the American film-maker said.

Video game adaptations may be a life raft for the movie industry, whose audiences have not returned in pre-pandemic numbers because of the convenience of streaming. Blockbusters are more important than ever, even as interest in the Marvel Cinematic Universe has waned.

“It’s not like Hollywood discovered games. It’s that games became bigger than Hollywood,” said Mr Derek Douglas, head of Creative Artists Agency’s game division.

The video game industry was valued at US$184 billion in 2023, according to the International Trade Administration, while analysts say the global box office that year was about US$34 billion.

The financial stakes make Mr Dmitri Johnson, a producer on the Sonic The Hedgehog movies (2020 to present), worried about executives who might commission video game projects without truly appreciating what fans want to see.

“The thing that keeps me up at night is the wrong people doing this and seeing the shiny objects,” said Mr Johnson, a co-founder of Story Kitchen, a production company that focuses on video game adaptations.

When Paramount in 2019 put out its opening trailer for the first live-action Sonic The Hedgehog, fans decried the blue-haired speedster’s appearance. Two days later, Jeff Fowler, the movie’s director, posted on social media: “The message is loud and clear… you aren’t happy with the design and you want changes. It’s going to happen.”

The studio enlarged the character’s eyes and further edited its facial features to better resemble its signature cartoon-like look that was established on Sega consoles in the 1990s. The movie ended up a hit, grossing US$320 million worldwide.

“I think that is a pivotal turning point in that studio and game relationship of, ‘We’re good at what we do, you’re good at what you do, but sometimes, maybe, there’s something in the middle,’” Mr Johnson said.

Video game movies were once considered cursed. In 1993, the live-action Super Mario Bros. did not break even on its US$48 million budget. Critics derided its realistic and gritty approach, the opposite of the lively and joyful tone of the colourful Nintendo games.

Three decades later, The Super Mario Bros. Movie became one of the highest-performing animated movies of all time. The vibrant colours and fast-paced action – along with Black playing the role of the villain Bowser with brio – resonated across generations.

There may be greater fidelity to popular franchises now, as emerging film-makers who grew up playing them reach positions of power. Cregger, 45, said he wanted to create a Resident Evil film that honoured the franchise’s intense games, in which players must solve puzzles and survive a nightmarish zombie-infested setting with sparse resources.

“I love the idea of being pitted against a world that is hell-bent on annihilating you,” he said. “It just feels fun and I haven’t seen a movie that offers that sort of experience.”

He added that if elements of his movie deviate from the game franchise’s lore, he anticipates that some fans will “crucify” him. NYTIMES