Adaptations & IP

What do Tim Cain the game developer, and Remedy the game studio have in-common? They don't seem to be attracted to Sequels. Not that they've never made them, not that they've never enjoyed them, not that they've never made some pretty damn great ones. Just that if they get to choose between an existing IP or a new IP, they're going to pick the latter almost every time.

And I love this.

I think there's a general sentiment that one of the issues with all forms of entertainment at the moment is an over reliance on franchises. That you're more likely to get a Scorsese-like film in the DC Universe than an original Scorsese film.

That you're going to get four flops in an existing IP and still get funding for another attempt rather than making four original films which, if they flop, were at least creating something new in the process of financial failure.

I've got ideas all the time for original projects. Even my own videos have drifted further and further away from established formats and more towards completely independent projects. Thing is, I also think about adaptations and IP...

All the fucking time.

Watching the new batch of Episodes for Andor Season 2 at this time of writing, absolutely adoring its scripts by Beau Willimon from House of Cards, I delightfully expressed upon the final credits roll "Man, if I could get him to work on Perfect Dark!" To which my friend said...

"What about Black Collar?"

Black Collar being my friend's short-film that's become a template of sort for an Espionage Universe that is completely original. We wouldn't need to follow whatever overt, implied, or expected restrictions of the Perfect Dark universe in it, we could get Beau for Black Collar, and he'd be infinitely more free to do whatever comes to his mind than anything to do with Perfect Dark.

It's a problem.

Original works, as impossible as they are to get made, are infinitely more likely to get made than any idea I have for any adaptation. They require an opportunity to go to a gatekeeper, convincing a gatekeeper to let you, convincing a gatekeeper to give you access to their property, and they convince a bunch of executives to fund your idea with the power to overrule that gatekeeper who gave you permission to use their property.

You're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

Meanwhile, your amazing idea and execution of an original work is something you could realize in some method right the fuck now.

Your amazing idea of an existing work can't, maybe, not ever. I've seen people get clobbered for just enhancing an existing product for zero monetary benefit to themselves. You think you're going to make a new product with this license for millions of dollars of required investment?

You're insane.

I'm insane.

So why do I think about it?

Adaptions are often judged through the lens of purpose. People will question "why is this being adapted?" There's too many differences, too many contradictions, too little care by the people involved, too many insults to the work that came before.

I don't personally share this view.

Not to give the wrong idea; there's lots of things I loved that were adapted into something I'm no longer interested in. Franchises can make a creative decision that I'm not on-board with, they can destroy character, put storylines into the grave, become completely cynical where they were once inspired.

What I almost never see with an existing property however is a lack of opportunity.

Everything I described which can happen to existing IP is just like life itself. We make mistakes, do things we don't believe in but succumb to, fall in with a bad crowd, prioritize things that harm us long-term for the short-term, be hated for doing bad things, be loved for doing good, or vice-versa.

The reason artists are attracted to Original IPs is because they're a completely blank slate. Artists talk about the weight lifted when you're free of expectation, able to pitch your ideas to the public like you did the first time but also differently, that whatever you couldn't do before in a previous world, you're now able to in ways that could be even better than anything you dreamed up in that other world.

It is amazing, especially when you're working with a brilliant team of collaborators who are each contributing their creativity to form something you couldn't have made without them, but that's the thing...

You're creating.

I'm attracted to adaptations because unlike original stories, they're not a blank slate. You can effect people in ways that aren't possible with an original IP, because there's a life around the IP's presence.

Your idea for it could be viewed as the worst possible direction to go at this point of time, and then be lauded twenty years later with an audience that wasn't even alive for what you made. The expectation an audience brings into your story could be the very thing at allows them to see what you're expressing. Your idea could destroy an existing audience and receive an even bigger one.

There's so much life behind an existing IP that no original could ever have by their very nature.

I think about an ODST VR Game because of how it could re-frame people's very conceptions of what a Halo game is. Make players view the Covenant not from the safety behind the screen as a seven-foot tall super soldier, but a highly-trained yet vulnerable hero who has to look at a Jackal's sharp teeth up-close.

I want a Perfect Dark show to realize Greg Rucka's tie-in novels for Zero because of its genuine originality as a work of Spyberpunk that I've only seen in Phantom Liberty.

I dream of re-imagining R: Racing Evolution as a large-scale, fully dynamic, 15-20hr Campaign epic period piece the era I grew up in, because of its original existence as a meager, linear, two hour Gran Turismo clone known mostly for its mammary.

Yes, lots of my favorite works are completely original IP.

Gone Girl, The Fragile, Rollerdrome, Battle Royale, 100 Bullets, The Wire... but there's also Ghost in the Shell '95, Half Life 2, Halo 2, Gran Turismo 2, Max Payne 2, and a billion other 2s, 3s, sometimes even 7s. I adore these things just as much as original work, and I think they can inspire just as much.

However, I'd be lying if I said I don't understand why there's the implication of original work being more admirable.

One of the reasons I think about adaptations all the time is because I don't think of what's considered the best or most successful...

I didn't think about The Last of Us, Fallout, or League of Legends prior to all of their respective shows. I don't think about continuing Halo's main-series. I do think about continuing Mass Effect, but only once regarding Shepard, and not as the protagonist.

I wasn't for The Last of Us getting a sequel, as I felt the game stood strongly enough as a solo-project that there wasn't a need to continue it. I wasn't for Resident Evil 4 being remade, as I felt the game stood strongly enough that whatever potential its remake had could be better realized in a new game.

I think about a new WET, a new Alpha Protocol; adapting Perfect Dark Zero's novels to the small-screen to visually realize its great story and characters, adapting Life is Strange to the small-screen to much better realize its story and characters.

I think about IP's that have so much potential to do so many things they didn't originally do.

And I understand that companies are attracted to exiting IPs because of one type of potential.

They treat existing IP as a Booster Card, not an opportunity.