The Rise of Game-to-Screen Adaptations: Netflix's New Megahit, Arcane - The Invaders

Games are like movies that can be played and nowadays Hollywood and other production companies are picking up on this interesting fact and more and more games are getting a movie or series adaptation. Arcane is the newest megahit with gaming origins.

The success of Arcane

On the ninth of November 2024 the first three episodes of the second season of Arcane came out on Netflix, and the hype was immense. When you look at the numbers, this is not weird at all. Since the first season of Arcane has gotten a 100% and 96% score on Rotten tomatoes’ tomato and popcorn meter. Which is a website that gathers reviews from critics around the world.

On this site the critics-score are the tomato ones, and the popcorn score is given out by the general population. The first act of the second season is now out and has already been praised for its high quality animation, storytelling and music, now fans are eagerly waiting for act two to come out on the sixteenth of November, and the final act which comes out a week later on the 25th.

Back to Arcane and the game League of legends. The Arcane story is centered around a couple different characters called champions in the game. The main characters of the show are Vi and Jynx, two sisters who got separated at one point of time by different circumstances. Their story and background, called Lore in gaming terms, is something every champion has in the game. Every character has a well-thought out backstory and finds its origin in one part of the lore about the game. With more than 140 different champions, there is a lot of source material to write new and intriguing series or movies about. 

From Mario to Minecraft

Besides League of Legends, more and more games are getting into the movie-world. In 2023 the Super Mario Bros movie came out, which had a budget of 100 million dollars. Which sounds like a lot, but is it really? When you know the revenue of the movie is over 1.36 billion dollars. The reviews from Rotten tomatoes were divided on this movie, giving a 59% tomato score and a 95% popcorn score on the meter. The general public really liked this movie, this conclusion can be made by the revenue and the 95% popcorn meter.

Another game that's been transformed into a movie is Uncharted. A game about the character Nathan Drake, who is a treasure hunter. The movie is based on the 4th installment of the Uncharted games called a thief's end. Sadly to many fans the movie doesn't stay to close the story of the game. First there is a big difference between the age of Nathan Drake in the movies and the game. In the fourth game Nathan is 38 years old and in the movies he is said to be 25 years.

Another big difference is that Nathan in the game is quite confident in his own abilities, that's because he started with being a treasure hunter in his teens. While in the movie he’s quite timid and still needs to learn lots of things about being a treasure hunter while being in his mid-twenties. Overall the movie critics of rottentomatoes were again not the biggest fan of the movie, giving a 41% tomato score, luckily the general public thought differently, giving a 89% popcorn score.

Borderlands: a cautionary tale

The next game to movie adaptation we're gonna take a look at is the Borderlands movie. This movie came out on the ninth of November 2024, and gamers were pretty hyped to finally see one of their beloved gaming franchises get a movie adaptation. Borderlands is a gaming franchise that is sci-fi themed in a colorful and unique world, where you play through a weird and entertaining story line by shooting bad guys and doing all kinds of different things.

Sadly the movie adaptation was a big flop, getting a tomato score of 9% and a popcorn score of 51%. So both critics and the general public didn’t like this game to movie adaptation. If you wanna read more about the Borderlands fiasco, our Art Director at The Invaders, Arman Güngör, wrote a detailed article about how the movie adaptation squandered its potential. 

Another gaming franchise that's coming to blockbusters next year is Minecraft. The movie is called: A Minecraft movie, which is scheduled to release on the third of April 2025. Minecraft is a sandbox game that came out on the seventeenth of May of 2009 with a playerbase of over 188 million monthly players in 2024. The game doesn't really have an objective, players themselves can decide what they wanna do in the game.

One player might love to build beautiful castles, while another loves exploring their uniquely generated world. With this in mind the movie producers carefully picked the name for the movie. Instead of The minecraft movie its called A minecraft movie. Meaning that the minecraft experience for every player can be different and every world has its unique story. Only the future will tell if this adaptation is gonna be a flop like Borderlands or a success like Arcane.

250 million dollars

But why spend 250 million dollars on a series where the rights are sold to Netflix for 3 million dollars per episode, which translates to 27 million dollars in total. To shed some light on this we can take a look at the revenues stream of Pokemon, one of the biggest gaming franchises in the world. In its lifetime Pokemon has had a lifetime revenue of 92 billion dollars which can be divided into 3 main revenue streams. First there is the revenue brought in from the content that they produce, like the Pokemon series that are seen on television or on Netflix.

These productions have had a total revenue of 4 billion dollars. Secondly are the games that they make for consoles, which brought in 17 billion dollars in total. And lastly there is the revenue they earn by merch and toys, which is the biggest revenue of all three, racking in over 71 billion dollars in total. Their merch brings in more then 77% of their total revenue, which can only be popular because the show and games are loved so much that people are willing to pay for Pokemon merch like plushies and Pokemon cards. 

In summary, each game takes place in a unique universe and world, so in the future we expect many more games to be brought into the world of series and movies. The only thing that's really important is that the movie producers stick close to the original source material. Movies about games are always gonna be watched by gamers, and gamers like their games, so when they get touched by the movie industry, they should try to understand how they can use these wonderful stories and turn them into a movie that's enjoyable for gamers and non-gamers.