Noah Hawley, showrunner of the likes of Alien: Earth and Fargo, is adapting Far Cry – but he won't be bringing a specific game in the series to the screen.
That's because, despite the success of video game adaptations like The Last of Us, Hawley doesn't think games are built in a way that really allows for easy adaptation.
"One thing that really attracted me to the Far Cry franchise is that it is an anthology and every time they release a new game, it is a totally different story," he told Deadline. "That's how I approach Fargo, and it was an exciting idea that we could build an anthology game adaptation where each season is a different story about civilized people thrown into situations where they have to become increasingly uncivilized.
"I'm not specifically adapting any of the games that they've put out – I'm saying much as I did with the Coens or X-Men [he created FX's Legion] or Alien, 'Let me have a dialog with this franchise, because this is what I think a Far Cry story is,'" he continued. "We can have a larger conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of adapting video games specifically because games are built in a way that doesn't make for the best drama.
"When you play a video game, you only really move forward through the gameplay section, and then you have these cut scenes that you can skip, so when you go to adapt those games, you have to be aware that makes the human drama kind of irrelevant to the storyline. That is death for a show," he added.
Of course, not all Far Cry games let you skip cut scenes, so it seems strange this is one of Hawley's reasons to be wary of doing a straight video game adaptation. And, it goes without saying that many video games have narratives with plenty of human drama that are ripe for TV and movie adaptation. Still, Far Cry is definitely a series that would suit an anthology structure, so Hawley's approach could fit perfectly. We'll just have to wait and see how it turns out.
The Far Cry show doesn't yet have a release date. While you wait, check out our guide to all the upcoming video game movies for all the other adaptations worth keeping your eye on.
