Gamer's World | From Mario to Elden Ring, Japanese Games Hit the Big Screen (and Box Office)

Two movies based on Japanese videogames were released this month—and they were different from each other in every way. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is a followup to the madly successful $1.3 billion-grossing 2023 Super Mario Bros Movie, while Exit 8 is a horror movie based on a more niche game of the same name.

Mario is a bright and zippy animated movie for kids, based on one of gaming's biggest ever franchises, and released to universally terrible reviews but global box-office success of $800 million and counting.

Exit 8 is a brooding psychological horror movie for adults, based on a surprise hit indie game most people don't know, released to universal praise and, for its $1 million budget, an impressive $40 million box office. (Note: Exit 8 was actually released in August 2025 in Japan, but this month marks its overseas release.)

The videogame adaptation boom has been in full swing for the past several years and shows no sign of letting up. But while some of the hits have come from Japanese IP—most notably the Sonic the Hedgehog and Resident Evil movie series—the majority of the best ones have been from the West.

*"Exit 8" became a moderate hit soon after the release of the indie game of the same name.*

Japan's Mixed Track Record

Japan has had its fair share of failures. The original Super Mario Bros movie back in 1993 was such a disaster that it took Nintendo some 30 years to dare to try again. Paul WS Anderson's Resident Evil movie series starring his wife Milla Jovovich did pretty well at the box office, but they weren't exactly masterpieces, while the pair's attempt at a Monster Hunter movie in 2020 was so awful it got completely banned in China thanks to racist dialogue and sank without a trace everywhere else. Meanwhile, Amazon's streaming-TV adaptation of the original Yakuza game was an uninspired mess that disappointed fans and was ignored by everyone else.

All this while Western games like The Last of Us and Fallout became incredible streaming-TV shows that generated renewed interest in their respective game franchises (thanks in part to the involvement of the original game developers), and A Minecraft Movie dominated the box office.

Japanese games are more popular today than ever, and now a fresh batch of adaptations is changing the game. The new Mario and Exit 8 movies are only the tip of the iceberg.

Reboots and Reinventions

First up, the excellent 2025 animated Devil May Cry series produced by Castlevania mastermind Adi Shankar for Netflix has a second season coming in May. The first season of this demon-hunting show based on Capcom's beloved stylish-action franchise was such a fan favorite that the second season was greenlit within a week of its initial release. Given the long-running success of Shankar's Castlevania series, this is likely not the end for demon hunter Dante and friends.

*Netflix's animated "Devil May Cry" continues with new episodes in May.*

In September we will get a brand new Resident Evil movie. Unrelated to Anderson's movie series, the new reboot is directed by Zach Cregger (Weapons) and will hew closer to the essence of the original games, if not slavishly replicating their stories or lore. The film has been described as a "non-stop nightmare" of horror, which sounds pretty cool!

A new Street Fighter movie is set for release in October. The series has spawned multiple movies already, most notably the 1994 film starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Kylie Minogue which has an 11% review score on Rotten Tomatoes. This time, the new film is helmed by Japanese-American director Kitao Sakurai with some cool stunt casting that includes Jason Momoa and Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson. The trailers suggest it will embrace the sillier side of a movie based on a fighting game, with a camp tone that looks like a lot of fun.

Zelda's Big-Screen Challenge

Looking further ahead, The Legend of Zelda will make its big-screen debut in May 2027, following reports that principal photography wrapped this month. The film is directed by Wes Ball, whose Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes was great, and stars young British actors Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Link and Bo Bragason as Princess Zelda. I have my reservations about this one, because Link never speaks in the Zelda games. If he has dialogue in the film, it could shatter the mystery built up over decades around this silent protagonist; but if he doesn't, well, a silent protagonist is a tall order for a live-action film.

*(From left) Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Bo Bragason on set of the Legend of Zelda movie.*

That said, the few official images released so far look pretty good, and I'd love to spend a couple of hours in Hyrule.

Incidentally, while Nintendo worked with Universal Pictures for the Mario movies, for Zelda its production partner is Sony Pictures. Much has been made of game console rivals Nintendo and Sony working together, but Sony Pictures is of course a different part of the Sony group than PlayStation, so I wouldn't get too excited for a crossover game project just yet.

A Story Too Big for One Film?

A film version of Hideo Kojima's sprawling Metal Gear Solid series has long languished in development hell, leading to the departure of director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. But this month we finally got an update: As part of a new multi-film deal, Final Destination: Bloodlines directors Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein were announced to now be leading the project, with no particular release date yet announced.

The Metal Gear games have an extremely intricate story that spans decades, following a covert conflict between special forces operatives and shadowy organizations manipulating global politics through nuclear-armed walking weapons called Metal Gears. Conspiracies, cloning, rogue AI and the battle for truth—there's a lot to pack into a two-hour movie, and a rabid fan base who will riot if it's bad, so Lipovsky and Stein will have their work cut out for them.

Elden Ring's Ambitious Leap

Finally, it's interesting that films are in development for both Elden Ring and Bloodborne. Both of these lauded games were directed by Dark Souls mastermind Hidetaka Miyazaki at FromSoftware, who has been reluctant to allow Hollywood adaptations of his work until now. And yet here we are with two coming along at once.

*"Elden Ring" features a back story by George RR Martin; the film will be written and directed by Alex Garland.*

Produced by acclaimed production company A24 and helmed by 28 Days Later writer/Civil War director Alex Garland, Elden Ring is quite an undertaking. Reported to be A24's biggest production to date, it boasts an incredible cast including Kit Connor, Cailee Spaeny, Ben Whishaw and Peter Serafinowicz.

In the mega-hit game, demigods wage war over the fragments of a fallen realm called the Lands Between. It's not clear yet whether the film will follow the game's story in any way, or perhaps fill in some of the blanks in its history, which was originally written by revered Game of Thrones author George RR Martin (who is involved in the film as a producer).

The game left a lot of the details of its lore intentionally blank for players to figure out among themselves, so I wonder whether the film will add much detail, or leave us with more questions than answers. Either way, Garland will also handle the script, and he is both a hardcore Elden Ring fan and an astonishing writer, so I'm definitely intrigued.

Bloodborne's Horror Potential

As for Bloodborne, the adaptation announced in April will be coproduced by Seán McLoughlin, better known as JackSepticEye, a streamer with over 30 million YouTube subscribers who has streamed his Bloodborne playthroughs for many years and therefore should have a deep understanding of the game and its world. A wonderfully bloodthirsty and Lovecraftian horror game, Bloodborne seems perfect for an unnerving live-action adaptation, so I'm quite excited for this one.

As long as Japanese game developers keep making unique worlds, we'll keep wanting to see them adapted for the cinema and TV—especially if this next batch turns out to be good. Could we be entering an era where Japanese games dominate not only the game charts but the box office as well?