Among the more… unique news at Gamescom today are two movie announcements from Sony. One for the Gran Turismo franchise, and another for the unreleased Watch Dogs video game.
Now Sony hasn’t given many details on either of these projects other than “Hey kids, we got these flix” alongside a couple of trailers… for the games that is, not the movies.
Sony is a multimedia conglomerate, with Playstation and Sony Pictures falling under their massive umbrella. I may be stating the obvious here but this is certainly a bit of a… different direction for a video game press conference, announcing yet to be made films alongside yet to be released games, and a groan inducing one for the film industry when you consider the poor history of video game adaptations to the silver screen.
In my opinion the Gran Turismo announcement is actually a little less surprising than Watch Dogs. Fast and the Furious is one of the longest running and most successful current cinema franchises, one can’t forget Pixar’s Cars, Chris Hemsworth starring in the upcoming Formula 1 racing biopic Rush, and Need for Speed recently announced its own plans for a Dreamworks movie. Racing is popular, gotta get in on that money bag while you can.
Watch Dogs on the other hand… For a game that’s basically just hype, that no one knows a lot about aside from Assassin’s Creed esque gameplay. This isn’t to say the game doesn’t look exciting but it’s a bit of a cause for alarm. I can also recall other multimedia “experiences” such as the .hack series or the Matrix where all the parts made for a lackluster narrative where the creators would have been better off focusing on one project. I do admit this is my own doomsaying, and we have yet to see how either the game or movie perform, but it’s not something that fills me with hype.
In the meantime I’ll be grabbing some popcorn and rewatching Postal.
