What are the reasons why Hollywood hasn’t yet mined the old Lucasarts games for movie ideas? They seem such natural source material.
Are there IP ownership complications?
Are the games themselves too derivative of movies (e.g. Monkey Island being inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and thus reverse-retrospectively derivative of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies)?
Would it be too hard to adapt them as comedies, or would they be too boring as non-comedies?
Is the built-in audience actually not as large as I imagine it would be?
Are there some gaming-ignorant egos involved? i.e. what lead to the 4th Indiana Jones using the lame Crystal Skull story instead of the great Fate of Atlantis story?
Is the world simply not ready for Day of the Tentacle on Disney+?
The Dig was derived from a story idea for a TV episode that Spielberg was involved in (supposedly Amazing Stories). But that wasn't filmed, so the idea got finally handed down to Lucas Arts.
The scuttlebutt is that Disney executives simply don't know what LucasArts IP they bought when they bought Lucasfilm and it will likely take new blood at the executive level with some bit of videogame literacy.
Some of that might also be complicated by existing licensing contracts. For instance, it's not clear from the outside how much Double Fine (and thus Microsoft) owns now of the games they managed to remake (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango). Maybe Microsoft has the movie rights now? That would be funny, though Microsoft's attempts at movies to date have all been cursed.
The "someone" was Davy Jones of the Monkees, who were kind of a big deal in the sixties. It's not that he couldn't use it, but he was unhappy as the name caused confusion.
He actually very briefly went by Tom Jones, to the point of doing a photoshoot under that name, before It's Not Unusual came out and forced him to change it again.
Moon is amazing indeed! He's certainly among my favourite modern directors. Crazy that a son of a rockstar not only turned out to be a pretty normal guy, but also got lots of recognition purely out of talent.
I recall playing the Full Throttle demo over and over again when I was a kid. I finally played the full game for the first time a few years ago when I discovered it was available on steam. It was great, but I was surprised how easy it was compared to some other titles in my memory, like Day of the Tentacle, then again my problem solving skills have improved since I was a child.
FT was definitely easier than the first 2 monkey islands, DoTT or Sam & Max. All of them are worth playing (as is Loom, which is perhaps similar in difficulty to FT).
I was joking at the time Disney bought LucasArts they did it in part to clear Pixar to sell Coco because of similarity to Grim Fandango.
The flipside is probably accurate now though, at this point Disney would probably be unlikely to greenlight a Grim Fandango film because they already have Coco.
Remakes of movies with cool ideas and poor execution make much more sense artistically, although I also understand why they're not popular commercially
"Put my head in a basket 'cause I'd had a tank full. When she blowed my gasket I surely was thankful. 'Til I head for the skies up above, it's a woman with wheels that I love."
Are there IP ownership complications?
Are the games themselves too derivative of movies (e.g. Monkey Island being inspired by the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and thus reverse-retrospectively derivative of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies)?
Would it be too hard to adapt them as comedies, or would they be too boring as non-comedies?
Is the built-in audience actually not as large as I imagine it would be?
Are there some gaming-ignorant egos involved? i.e. what lead to the 4th Indiana Jones using the lame Crystal Skull story instead of the great Fate of Atlantis story?
Is the world simply not ready for Day of the Tentacle on Disney+?