Paige FTW: From Screen To Screen
Leapfrogging after last week’s column, this winter finds a few gaming properties actually moving from, well, screen to screen. Will they be successful? Let’s hash it out.
The Witcher (Netflix, Dec. 20)
The famed and much beloved RPG becomes a gritty, Games of Thrones-like fantasy epic on Netflix. Trailers look … pretty great, actually, as big-time Witcher fan Henry Cavill hurls himself into the role. Anya Chalotra also looks great as Yennefer, though I’ll admit Freya Allen as Ciri just looks off to me. Nevertheless, the series promises fidelity to the novels that inspired the game, so consider this a prequel, of sorts, to the work CD Projekt Red has done. The eight-episode series supposedly had a budget of $1 million per episode. It certainly looks amazing, so I have high hopes that this will be a success for both Witcher fans and those who are hunting for a new high fantasy fix.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Feb. 20)
Worth mentioning is the transformation that Sonic the Uncanny Hedgehog took between the trailer released earlier this year, and this new and much-truer-to-the-original trailer that came out earlier this week. Delaying the movie to revamp the way the main character look is a crisis reaction that … totally made things better. Sonic looks like he should, not like some unholy rat, uh, person that he was. I’m sure the movie will still be terrible, but at least it no longer burns your eyes to look at.
Well, those are the two confirmed things, anyway. A lot of other stuff is swirling around in development and the most likely contenders to actually make it to some kind of screen include the Uncharted prequel starring Tom Holland, a series of Rabbids-related animated content (which does not appeal to me, I will admit) and, apparently, a Final Fantasy XIV show. Huh. I guess we’ll see what unfolds…
