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At the center of power is DJ2 Entertainment, a small independent production company that has made a name for itself in Hollywood, which helped Parson Paramount Sonic the Hedgehog adapt to the most successful video games of the last two decades.

Streaming services are turning into video games, the relentless search for new content leads to dj2 already opening a downstairs store closely linked to the gambling industry. With just a few people from Los Angeles, the team now selects everything from big-budget cartoons to indie game adaptations with Oscar-level ambitions.

“We are all real players. When we turn on the computers in our office, we have all the platforms,” said Dmitry Johnson, co-founder and CEO of DJ2. Discussing consistency, he said, "We don't care how many copies are sold."

Instead, we're talking about filmmaking—television that can go beyond the original—a successful industry that can become a commercial product in its own right. "Mom's experiment. My mom would watch this movie and know it was based on a game," Johnson said. It does not matter.

Dj2 is an independent production company, which means that Johnson and his team are involved in various projects, helping to complete them, including the initial step, helping to get all the moving parts needed for a movie or TV show. Adjust production for removal. Land and production.

Often this means acting as an intermediary between game studios and Hollywood production companies to ensure not only the integrity of the creative process, but also that the project receives the necessary budget and talent so that it does not fail. "You can't [create] with too much control, then you get Assassin's Creed, or Hollywood gets too much control, and then you get Mario," Johnson said.

"Hollywood has often risked those rights," he said. "Go to the corner, let the grown-ups do it," Johnson said of previous game adjustments that had failed miserably. As a producer, he said his team's challenge was to bridge the gap between acting and Hollywood.

While everyone at DJ2 is obsessed with gamers trying to fit in with everything they do, they need the same level of commitment from those they work with. “Every boss we talk to gets a game code,” Johnson said. '

Avoid the Curse of Video Game Personalization

For Johnson 6 and his team, the fact that Hollywood is now recognizing that the gaming industry is long overdue is certainly the result of adapting comic book graphic novels. "It's an initiative that we've been screaming about in the studios since the early 2000s," he said.

Johnson argued that the problem was not that the games were instinctively badly adapted, but that the old Hollywood didn't realize it. The directors and producers of the studio chose the wrong materials, the wrong talent, the wrong size, the results show it. While Marvel has been refining the superhero movie and now paving the way for more experimental comic book and video game adaptations, the producers never figured out the winning formula, even which genre was the most significant.

Every driver we talk to gets a game code. [We are speaking]. "Go play and then come back to chat."

Here's a long line of failed adaptations of just how disastrous (but now iconic) Super Mario Bros. is. Latest 1993 Street Fighter 1994 1994 1994 Mortal Combat և Resident Evil 1994 90s 1994 00s. Two decades ago, there were several big budget projects that only increased the pressure on Hollywood to try and get transmedia products out of the gambling industry. Rock with The Rock in 2005 and Prince of Persia with a very non-Persian Jack Gyllenhall in 2010, to name but a few.

None of these films have a rating of over 40% on Rotten Tomatoes. Whether they get their budget back or not, and then some (with the exception of Doom), they are widely considered creative spots in the mainstream jobs of the gambling industry. Gyllenhall has been particularly openly mocking his attacks in video games.

The industry seems to have learned very little since Prince of Persia. Need for Speed, Assassin's Creed based on Warcraft, another Tomb Rider (this one with Alicia Vikander) was a movie based on the battle. All of them showed better results than their predecessors. Warcraft, especially overseas where it has become the most deserving video game of all time. However, the game's adaptation had a good reputation.

"There was a stigma that sucking video game adaptations didn't work," Johnson said. “The producers have similarly taken NYT bestsellers, comics and graphic novels. If you have the right talent, you have real people, you can get something great.”

Walkthrough "Detective Pikachu" Reputation adjustment settings

So what is changing now? Okay, first of all, adaptations are better, but that's partly because people take on more (so much) creative wobble.

“Netflix is ​​very popular,” Johnson said. “Many [Netflix subscribers] don't watch [traditional] TV. They watch something on their computers or phones. They will be your players too! Creating content for these people is a very smart move from the start. performers."

The streaming service has been instrumental in bringing game adaptations back to the map, not as a critical choice, but in a more sought-after entertainment industry than ever before. This is mainly done by focusing on television as well as a mix of live-action and animated series.

“When it comes to breaking down barriers, of course, people like Netflix [were at the forefront] were among the first to consider supporting this type of content,” said Dan Jones, co-founder and co-producer of J2. . Sonic the Hedgehog, who now oversees some of the company's most luxurious customizations. It also helps, he adds, that those who buy "creative" films have grown with the game. "They're all fans of the game."

The Witcher was a huge success for Netflix and it was a little easier for the company to adapt as the series was based on an existing book series with a descriptive roadmap built in as well as popularity. A series of video games with a large number of fans around the world. The same can be said about Castlevania, a fantasy animated series based on the plot of the game, but based on the existing Dracula, the great animated series েন Adi անկ, produced by Warren Ellis.

Netflix is ​​very popular. A lot of [Netflix subscribers] don't watch [traditional] TV. They see things on their computer or phone. They will be your players too!

“This is the perfect storm,” Johnson said. “Even though The Witcher was based on a book, the game had a fan base. All of a sudden you get a successful adaptation և now you have a broadcaster like traditional studios competing for these things. It only creates more noise."

Video game adaptations are now more than ever appealing to leading writers, actors and directors. Legendary Pictures, which ended up losing money on Warcraft but saw hope for a video game adaptation, released the most important video in five years with 2019's Detective Pikachu, which was heavily based on CGI. Bring her title image to life. It starred Ryan Reynolds, who starred in a video inspired by the Free Guy video game.

Detective Pikachu earned a rare 68% on Rotten Tomatoes, performed well at the box office and set the stage for Paramount's Hedgehog Sonic sequel. “Sonic, Detective Pikachu, and Castelia were needed for TV work,” Johnson said. “For Sonic, we knocked on the door. The day after Sonic was released, we got a call from every studio in town."

Dj2 is currently in the midst of the most popular gaming adaptation in the industry. In addition to co-producing the Sonic movie, the team is working with Netflix on the Tomb Rider animation program. ZA/UM Disco Elysium, TV series indie programmer; Life's Legend Entertainment Strange և My Friend Pedro Project; আই Hong Kong iconic martial artist և Sleeping Dogs actor Donnie Yen with many other adaptations.

The company has also secured a contract with Amazon for the first time to produce new films and shows, the first being the Hazlelight Studios adaptation of It Takes with Dwayne "The Rock" and Johnson's Seven Box Productions . And last fall, he signed a first-person deal with game publisher Raw Fury , a well-known indie brand like Norco, the company behind Sable, with the goal of turning such indie hits into an award-winning movie-TV series. Johnson's company also launches games and other alternative media and has partnered with Genvid Technologies on an interactive Facebook reality show called Rival Peak.

Things are changing not just because the video game industry has a fast-growing, huge global fan base with more financial power than Hollywood. It's also true that games come in all shapes and sizes, including genres that other media groups have never dared to try.

“Over the past two decades, the gambling industry has evolved into a genre that takes people seriously,” said Stefan Bugaz, creator of dj2 and CEO of Creative Innovation. After working at Teltel Games, Bugaz joined in 2015 where he was director of creative development based on his episodic storytelling games, including games based on The Walking Dead Game of Thrones.

“Some of the best writers in the world write stories for video games,” Bugaz said. In many cases, writers and game directors such as Neil Druckman of The Naughty Dog (The Last of Us) and Joseph Faris (It Takes Two) are now executive producers of their own film adaptations and TV adaptations.

On the contrary, adapted games are becoming more and more complex: more and more famous names appear in Hollywood and more and more new projects appear. HBO's Chernobyl Emmy Award-winning Craig Magazine co-wrote direct with Druckman on The Last of Us, while Sony co-starred with Staleski on Ghost and director Takashi chose Doshar. . Sushima "adaptation.

“In recent years, the origins of gaming have become much richer and broader,” Bugaz said. "Hollywood is finally getting some attention," he said. “Given the size of the gambling industry, some of these games have a lot of fans.”

Bugaz notes that a moderately successful adaptation of an indie game could attract far more fans than any other Hollywood source. "Even small indie games can sell 50,000 or 100,000 copies." Compare that to the publishing industry, which is New York's top seller, he said. There is a lot of growth, many people are simply delighted with the material. ”

Creating Batman for Warner Bros. Burton was a big risk. "Getting serious about comic book stuff," Jones said. Dj2 is also looking forward to many of its upcoming indie titles and admits that, as with comics, it may take quite a bit of daring testing to claim the equivalent of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight game. Or Damon Lindelph's guardian.

But due to the game's larger audience and different storytelling, the team believes the problem is that instead of adapting to video games, the show will end up being stolen from the prize show. "We were screaming from the roof. The problem isn't the game, the problem is consistency," Jones said. "And people are listening."