With the recent history-making success of The Super Mario Movie, the world is clearly still obsessed with the recent trend of high-quality video game adaptations. With Hollywood continuing to look to video games for their next blockbuster hit, there is one major title that is on everyone's mind: Fortnite. Being one of the most popular games in the world with numerous amounts of crossovers and cameos along with a massive player base would make it seem prime for some sort of foray into another medium. Recently, Collider's own Steve Weintraub attended the Sands International Film Festival in St. Andrews, Scotland, and had the chance to discuss the topic of a Fortnite adaptation with Donald Mustard, the Chief Creative Officer at Epic Games, the development studio behind the Battle Royale title. While he said that there aren't any current plans for a series or film, that doesn't mean that it would never happen.
Weintraub cites the recent success of not just the aforementioned Super Mario Movie but also the massive hit that was HBO Max's The Last of Us series and posed the question of when Fortnite will follow the path of these other video game heavy-hitters. Mustard said, "I don't know. To me, I wanna do stuff that always just feels authentic and is a great story. And so, it's not something we're actively working on right now. I'm not gonna say it would never happen. In fact, I mean, I know exactly how I would do the Fortnite whatever. Exactly. I know exactly the story I’d want to, but it's not the focus right now. I don’t have time."
Following up on that, Weintraub spoke about Epic Games' relationship with Joe Russo and the brothers' production company AGBO which Epic has an investment in, by saying that this connection could be used to leverage an adaptation if they wanted to. Mustard agreed that that connection would make getting a film or TV project off the ground much easier, it just isn't in the cards right now. "Oh yeah, a Fortnite movie gets greenlit by any studio in a second. It’s just there's other stuff we're working on right now."
Fortnite is no stranger to having Hollywood stars and franchises in their game as they have had many crossovers with popular franchises with the likes of Jason Momoa appearing as Aquaman and the Star Wars franchise being represented across many different events with The Mandalorian and Daisy Ridley's character Rey making appearances along with many others from the galaxy far, far away. When talking about the actual story of Fortnite, they even had Dwayne Johnson appear as a major character called The Foundation before also appearing as his won Black Adam-inspired cosmetic. This is just scratching the surface of the many different crossovers that Fortnite has had, so it isn't too hard to believe a project could get off the ground with their foot already in the door.
The Recent Overwhelming Success Of Video Game Adaptations
Video game adaptations have been all the rave the last few years in both film and TV as Netflix has created fantastic adaptations like Castlevania, the Emmy Award-winning series Arcane, and the Anime of the Year winner at the Anime Awards 2023, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners with more plans for a Bioshock film on the way from the streaming service. The success of The Super Mario Movie joins the strong showing of his eternal rival as both Sonic the Hedgehog films saw amazing box office showings, with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 blazing past $400 million dollars at the global box office and were the highest-grossing opening weekend for a video game adaptation ever with $72.1 million until Mario beat the Blue Blur for that top spot with $146.4 million.
The success of Sonic has seen SEGA announce that they plan to adapt more of their games in the future. Other video game adaptations that are in development include a Ghost of Tsushima film by John Wick director Chad Stahelski, a Twisted Metal series at Peacock, and a film based on the Video Game Award's 2022 Game of the Year It Takes Two at Prime Video, with the previously mentioned Dwayne Johnson set to serve as a producer.
Looking for more video game adaptation news? Check out our interview with Pedro Pascal, who stars in The Last of Us: