The modern movie industry is heavily populated with franchises, though not all of them are actually in the right medium. After the major success of franchises at the box office, it’s clear that Hollywood’s main intention is to deliver stories that span multiple movies. The logic is sound: take an existing property that fans love and give them more of it. Unfortunately, the execution is sometimes lacking, and while the best movie franchises are hugely successful, many others struggle to maintain a consistent quality output. Unfortunately, this often leads to even once-beloved franchises outstaying their welcome on the big screen.
There are many movie franchises that need to go away, but there are some that shouldn’t vanish entirely. The following are all movie franchises that would do much better if they instead pivoted into the medium of video games, giving fans the means to explore their respective stories in a more interactive way. In each case, there’s also a clear path to the sort of game and story that would work perfectly, outlining how the franchise could live on away from the big screen.
It’s no secret that the John Wick franchise is hugely popular, with Keanu Reeves’ turn as the eponymous hitman proving one of his most iconic career roles. With four movies focused on the titular character and a spin-off, titled Ballerina, the John Wick franchise has grown hugely over a relatively short space of time. While it might sound blasphemous to suggest it should move away from movies and into video games, there’s a good reason for it: the titular character is played by an actor who won’t be able to continue in the action-heavy role indefinitely.
Moving over to the realm of video games would allow fans to step into the role of John Wick, delivering a tense action thriller that could feature brutal fights that combine gunplay with hand-to-hand combat. Interactive environments, hordes of enemies, and realistic gun mechanics are all elements that would make a John Wick game feel like a natural evolution of the franchise, and Keanu Reeves could theoretically continue to voice the character for many years to come.
Pacific Rim is a franchise that combines some of the coolest movie robots with some of the most dangerous kaiju monsters, delivering action on an epic scale. The first movie, Pacific Rim, was released in 2013 and secured positive reactions from fans and critics alike. The 2018 sequel, Pacific Rim: Uprising, did not fare so well, and an animated TV series, Pacific Rim: The Black released to little fanfare in 2021. While an additional prequel series is in the works, it seems to be a perfect time to bring the Pacific Rim franchise into the world of video games.
Allowing the players to take control of one of the franchise’s Jaegers and battle against colossal kaiju seems like a winning formula. Battling against giant monsters in huge destructible environments could work brilliantly as a video game, perhaps as a fighting game that allows players to choose between multiple Jaegers and monsters, or even customize their own. There’s so much scope to expand the franchise by capitalizing on the sheer action spectacle, and a video game would be a great way to do so.
There aren’t many sci-fi franchises that can claim to be as seminal to the genre’s evolution and as culturally relevant as The Matrix. Keanu Reeves’ Neo sits at the heart of the franchise, but ultimately, its story focuses on the ongoing future war between humanity’s survivors and a race of sentient machines, fought both in the bleak apocalyptic future and in the simulation of our present known as the Matrix. Sadly, the franchise has never been able to fully live up to the quality of the original movie, with its sequels falling short despite their best efforts.
This outlines why it would be the perfect time to reintroduce The Matrix as a video game franchise. Previous attempts were met with success, but the advancement of gaming technology would allow for some truly excellent gameplay. A new game could explore some of The Matrix‘s forgotten characters and could perhaps function as a cyberpunk MMORPG where players can explore the titular simulation and fight against the machine’s agents inside it. With the movies struggling to recapture the original magic, a pivot into a new medium might be exactly what The Matrix needs.
After an abysmal movie adaptation in 1995, it took until 2012 for Judge Dredd to return to the big screen. Dredd proved to be a cult sci-fi flop, and attempts to start a franchise have repeatedly stalled. As there seems to be so much difficulty in developing a new Judge Dredd movie or TV show, it might be time for the 2000 AD character to instead return to the gaming world, where there would be many opportunities for an excellent addition to his pop culture legacy.
A gritty action thriller that allows players to peer through the visor of Dredd’s iconic helmet has clear potential, set against the backdrop of the overpopulated and crime-ridden Mega-City One. The comics are packed with great stories and characters that could easily be adapted into video game form, and either a large open-world or smaller, episodic missions could both work for a Dredd game. Having Karl Urban reprise his role to voice Dredd would be the perfect final touch, tying a hypothetical game into the movie franchise that never managed to get itself off the ground.
