There was a lot of talk about the new Resident Evil movie over the past few months. While many were excited that acclaimed director Zach Cregger was behind it, longtime fans of the gaming franchise were upset that he wasn’t incorporating any of the characters or major storylines from the source material. However, it worked to the franchise’s benefit, as Cregger’s movie was met with strong critical acclaim and had the biggest box office intake of the film series to date. He opted to focus on making it feel like you were in the world of Resident Evil playing the game, rather than hitting the beats of the established stories.
Although a controversial decision, it’s one that more video game movie adaptations should try. Games typically feature stories that span a dozen or more hours. That’s hard to narrow down into a two-hour runtime, meaning things get left out and fans of the games get upset when that happens. Instead, these films would do well to just deliver an adaptation that feels like the game and ignore the story so they don’t get bogged down by it. The success of Resident Evil is all the proof needed to see why these games should get similar treatment.
Metroid is an even longer-running game franchise than Resident Evil. There are so many installments that it would be difficult to pick one or two to pull from in terms of adapting it. However, Metroid works because the plots have never been anything overly memorable. That lack of a defined story might seem like a negative, but it opens the door for a director to kind of do whatever they want, which is what Zach Cregger did to a rousing success.
Everything about Metroid is cool enough without needing a deep story. Samus is a cool lead character who wears a suit that we’d love to see come to life in live-action or animation. In fact, every game is something of a visual marvel, so that would be great in a film. The franchise is ripe for an adaptation that feels like the game without having to take all that much in terms of lore or story elements.
Silent Hill actually shares a lot in common with Resident Evil. Both are long-running survival horror gaming franchises and both have had several film adaptations that missed the mark. In fact, Return to Silent Hill was also a 2026 movie that was far less successful than Resident Evil. That movie tried its best to adapt so much of Silent Hill 2 and the fact that it didn’t work is further proof that this is a franchise that needs to try something new.
A Silent Hill movie should do exactly what Resident Evil did, which is focus on an original character and original story in a terrifying world that we’ve all come to know. Also, the protagonists of the games have often been everyday people who aren’t trained for what’s going on, which worked wonderfully in Resident Evil. If Silent Hill can get the right director and follow that concept, the end result could be the franchise’s first great movie.
Dead Space is one of the best combinations of sci-fi and horror in history. The game found success and expanded into more lore, from an animated film to sequels to a comic book. A live-action movie would be a great call, especially because you don’t need all that much in terms of story or lore to adapt. You don’t even need Isaac Clarke to be the protagonist, as anyone trapped in a mining spaceship overrun by monsters could work, since it would help the audience put themselves in that position.
This is one of those cases where you don’t need to overthink. It could work similarly to 1979’s Alien, where the vastness of space and the atmosphere add to the eerie feeling. By the time you actually see the monsters, you should be pretty scared. Things like hallucinations and the claustrophobia when actually stuck in the spaceship are also excellent horror elements to include without needing anything related to the overall plot of the games.
