Super Mario, Pedro Pascal inĀ 'The Last of Us,'Ā and Jack Black inĀ 'A Minecraft Movie'
Hollywood is betting big on video game IP at a rough moment for the people who make the games. Last week alone, indie horror video gameĀ āTormented SoulsāĀ sold its film and TV rights, days after Universal scooped up 10 classic Atari properties. Meanwhile, the gaming industry's recent lowlights:
- Xbox is cutting roughly 3,200 jobs (20% of the division) and shedding four studios, in what new CEO Asha Sharma calls the most significant restructure in its history
- Microsoft has been cutting gaming jobs nearly every year since its $68.7B purchase of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023
- āFortniteāĀ maker Epic reportedly shed around 1,000 roles in March
- By some counts, gaming has lost around 45,000 jobs since 2022
Meanwhile, on screens, the same IP has never been hotter.Ā 'The Super Mario Galaxy Movie'Ā was 2026's first $1B film (on a $110M budget),Ā 'A Minecraft Movie'Ā grossed $960M last year,Ā 'Five Nights at Freddy's'Ā turned a $20M budget into $297M, andĀ 'Fallout'Ā drove an estimated $80M in game revenue for Bethesda.
It wasn't always this way.Ā For decades, game adaptations flopped so reliably the industry gave the phenomenon a name: the "video game movie curse." Ironically, Hollywood cracked the code at the exact moment the industry behind the games started to buckle.
The takeaway:Ā Producers sayĀ the chaos will probably help Hollywood. Publishers under financial pressure are more open to licensing their IP, and smaller independent studios come with less corporate red tape on rights deals. The turmoil may end up speeding the pipeline, not slowing it, with even more deals likely on the way. And more games on screen is a win for both sides of the table.
