40 Videogames That Need Movies

Left 4 Dead 2

The Game: Zombies are real, and they’ve taken over the world. With the CEDA abolished by the government, people are encouraged to use firearms to take out the undead – the fight for survival is on.

Movie Version:
A big screen version of The Walking Dead , essentially, with four survivors attempting to evade the slathering undead hordes.

Directed By: James Cameron taking on zombies is something we'd love to see.

Burnout 3: Takedown

The Game: Car-racing with balls – vehicles battle against each other in various cities, and causing the competition to crash is actively encouraged. The winner really does take all.

Movie Version: Sort of Mad Max meets Death Race , as illegal racing rings hit big cities and race to the death – before burning rubber to evade the authorities.

Directed By: Nicolas Winding Refn – because he’d bring a glassy cool to proceedings.

World Of Warcraft

The Game: A ‘questing’ game, in which players journey through fantastical realms and fight either other players, or non-player characters. Mila Kunis is apparently a fan.

Movie Version:
Difficult not to stray into cheesy terrain, but if Peter Jackson can do it, so can WOW . Something that digs into the WOW mythology would be ace – basically we want another LOTR .

Directed By: Duh, Peter Jackson.

Call Of Duty: Black Ops

The Game: First-person shooter. SAD operative Alex Mason is active between 1961 and 1968, and gets whiff of a nerve agent called Nova-6 created by a man called Friedrich Steiner.

Movie Version: What’s scarier than war? A war with zombies! As Mason works taking out members of the Soviet Ascension program, an outbreak of the undead makes his task that much harder.

Directed By: Tony Scott, because subtlety was never his strong suit.

Half-Life

The Game: Sci-fi first-person shooter, the game charts theoretical physicist Dr Gordon Freeman’s attempts to escape an underground lab where teleportation research has gone really very wrong.

Movie Version: Geeky hero Dr Freeman (Emile Hirsch) is the only man for the job when the secret lab he’s working in is ripped open by a portal, through which numerous hostile nasties are quickly emerging. Can he save the day?

Directed By: Joss Whedon could get the geek and a twisty plot down pat.

Shadow Of The Colossus

The Game: A young man named Wander travels on horseback. He must defeat 16 giant creatures ('colossi') to bring a girl called Mono back to life.

Movie Version: We can retain the plot, with Taylor Kitsch as the enigmatic wanderer, only let’s give him a young sidekick to ensure that the movie isn’t completely dialogue-free.

Directed By: Richard Kelly needs a break, and this is different enough from what he's done before to give him a new direction.

Bioshock

The Game: In an alternate 1960, plane crash survivor Jack discovers the underwater world of Rapture, and battles the city’s mutated creatures and mechanical inhabitants. Its third act twist also challenges The Sixth Sense for ingenious rug-pullage.

Movie Version: An adap has struggled in pre-production for a while, but this would be awesome on the big screen. Steampunk crossed with period adventure thrills – and Andrew Garfield as Jack, blatantly.

Directed By: Neil Blomkamp

Perfect Dark

The Game: Special agent Joanna Dark unravels a conspiracy involving rival institute dataDyne. While firing a gun and kicking lots of booty.

Movie Version: We’ve yet to find a big screen female spy to match Bond in the movie franchise stakes, but Joanna Dark could be the one. Plonk Jennifer Garner in the role, map out a smart origins story, and a franchise is born – not to mention a kick-ass film heroine.

Directed By: Joss Whedon again – nobody can write women like him. Perfect Dark needs him.

Super Mario Galaxy

The Game: Mario goes on an intergalactic quest to save Princess Beach from the villainous Bowser, which takes him on a whirlwind trip of the universe.

Movie Version: Yeah, yeah, they already made a movie version, but this one would rock. It’s got a princess, a big baddie, and a trip through the stars. What could possibly go wrong?

Directed By: Henry Selick made good with Coraline , we trust him with Mario .

The Oregon Trail

The Game: Educational videogame from 1971, in which a wagon leader travels from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon's Willamette Valley over the Oregon Trail.

Movie Version : It’s 1848, and a family of travellers are attempting to cross the Oregon Trail - only it’s a place full of danger. Christoph Waltz is the daddy who shows he cares with his fists.

Directed By: Andrew Dominik's Assassination Of Jesse James was a beautiful period cork-screwer - he'd be ideal for this.

Which videogame do you think needs turning into a movie? Sling us a comment below...

Josh Winning has worn a lot of hats over the years. Contributing Editor at Total Film, writer for SFX, and senior film writer at the Radio Times. Josh has also penned a novel about mysteries and monsters, is the co-host of a movie podcast, and has a library of pretty phenomenal stories from visiting some of the biggest TV and film sets in the world. He would also like you to know that he "lives for cat videos..." Don't we all, Josh. Don't we all.