14 Universal Films We Want To See Adapted Into Video Games

Video games and movies used to go together like peas in a pod. Less than a decade ago, it was rare to see a big blockbuster hit go without an interactive tie-in, but the trend has slowly disappeared due to the increasing costs of game development and higher standards. However, with recent endeavors like The Mummy Demastered and the upcoming Jurassic Park Evolution, movie publisher Universal Pictures is positioning itself back into the game industry by forming partnerships with developers to adapt its film properties.

With movie-to-video game adaptations screening in our minds lately, we decided to pitch some dreamy pairings for Universal to consider with studios well-versed in genres that would be sublime for How To Train Your Dragon, Purge, and more.

The Thing – Behaviour Interactive
Behaviour Interactive has handled a bunch of movie-licensed games and ports for nearly two decades, but the team struck its own creative vein with Dead by Daylight. It's an unusual competitive and cooperative experience with one player hunting down a group of survivors. However, instead of an immediately hostile threat that survivors must hide and run away from, it'd be a treat to see the studio try its hand with narrative tension and thrills with The Thing.

Movies like Alien or even the recent film A Quiet Place are scary since their respective beasts are nearly unstoppable forces of nature. They're fast and powerful, but The Thing's self-titled alien is slow and easily susceptible to fire, relying instead on cunning deception and careful planning. A game could be centered around a group of friends where one of them is The Thing, and the only way to find out who's who is to uncover environmental clues of where the real versions of characters have been disposed of. Players would only be able to chat through the game and not know who's playing who in order for this idea to work, but it could be a major component of character development and solving clues by talking with and quizzing other players. The Thing would attempt to bluff its way out of conversations and mislead other players, resulting in a dangerous tense game for both parties since a lapse in judgment could spell doom for either one.

Curious George – Gears For Breakfast
Much like the misadventures of a Peruvian bear named Paddington, Curious George always finds himself in everyday situations where things go wrong but steer right in the end. The little monkey is innocent, imaginative, and full of adventure, and it's not like developers haven't seen the potential in the property.  The 2006 Monkey Bar Games adaptation had solid ideas like silly minigames and a "curious meter" that fills up depending on what you interact with in environments.

Gears of Breakfast is a small yet ambitious team that worked on the widely well-received A Hat in Time. With a solid grasp on feel-good controls and charming storytelling, Universal should task them with taking Curious George on a host of seemingly everyday situations that turn into unpredictable, joyous sandboxes packed to the brim with collectibles, platforming challenges, and wacky characters to meet.

Bourne – IO Interactive
The levels of secrecy involved with projects such as Blackbriar and Treadstone seemed to know no bounds as the Bourne movies unfolded, introducing new characters into the fold like Aaron Cross in The Bourne Legacy with the Outcome Operation. While several of his fellow agents were killed, there are a handful (including Cross) that are still alive along with Jason Bourne after the most recent film. With a sequel planned and doubts surrounding the continuation of Cross' story, Universal would be remiss to not capitalize on the latter with a shooter guided by the stealth masters at IO Interactive.

Hitman provides sandboxes of seemingly limitless possibilities with how players can approach assassination, but in keeping with the iconic scenes and cinematography of the films, it'd be great to see a fast-paced, action-oriented game from the Hitman studio. There could be brief elements of pre-planning before players engage in an intense CQC fight or cleverly take out a group of CIA agents by using environments to their advantage, which would lend replayability and unpredictability to how encounters would turn out. A more linear, narrative-focused game would likely need to be prioritized to make this possible, but it would need to allow players to live out the tactical brilliance that Cross and Bourne display.

Pacific Rim – Platinum Games
Power Rangers popularized the concept of giant robots needing to be controlled by multiple users, but Pacific Rim brought more pseudoscience into the mix with pilots and combined neural interfaces. It's thrilling to watch them struggle and succeed working together to commandeer Jaegers, and while the safe route for a game adaptation would be a simple beat 'em up or traditional fighter in Platinum Games' style, what would make it even more compelling is turning it into a cooperative fighting campaign where two players fight as one.

To fend off Kaiju and prevent as much damage to cities as possible, there are specific weapons, combos, movement, and other features of Jaegers that would need to be combined or specifically-assigned efforts to each player like leg or arm movement, weapons management, etc. Different Kaiju would demand different approaches and compensating actions to survive. Should players do so effectively, they could charge up special moves or modes to turn the tide of battles. Perhaps this could even be a co-op experience with four players piloting two Jaegers with PvE events set across the globe. Competitive is a possibility as well given the events of Jaegers fighting each other in Uprising, too. Either way, Platinum Games would do a fine job since the bombast, scope, and tone of the films closely aligns with the developer's pedigree of colorful, explosive titles like Transformers Devastation and The Wonderful 101.

Insidious – Supermassive Games
Until Dawn knew exactly what it wanted to be with its B-movie premise and stereotypical characters, but Supermassive Games took these attributes and crafted a thrilling, branching storyline of survival that never lets up. Characters' fates are in your hands with the most subtle decisions and sudden events that can drastically shift outcomes when you least expect it. With a little more suspension of disbelief, Insidious could be the next step up for the studio to evolve Until Dawn's formula.

Insidious follows demonologists who research and help people who can access The Further: a spiritual purgatory of haunted souls between worlds. They attempt to possess individuals with the ability to astral project (their souls leaving their bodies), and since the series can go back to any place or era with this premise, why not have a Victorian setting of budding demonologists who encounter a spirit that traps them in its own personal maze within The Further? The group would have to work together to slowly work their way back to reality, but with other demons to face and hard choices to make, not everyone will carry on with what they've learned about this haunted dimension. Players could have characters' fates in their hands with tense quick-time events, a branching narrative, and dangerous puzzles to solve.

How To Train Your Dragon – Insomniac Games
The tale of a small, purple dragon and an orphaned Lombax loom large over Insomniac Games' history since the developer has always been at its peak with 3D platformers. The team hasn't been afraid to cover other genres with first-person shooters, VR titles, and mobile RPGs, but whimsical fantasy and wit are at Insomniac Games' core. Combined with its bold willingness to experiment, they'd be a perfect fit to turn How To Train Your Dragon into a sprawling single-player adventure.

School of Dragons and previous movie tie-ins poked at this potential with semi-open worlds and freeform flying, but the scope and beauty of DreamWorks' animation and imagination are hard to match on a budget. With the third movie setting Hiccup to be the new chief of Berk, a coinciding game during his first years of leadership should go all in with different islands to visit in a giant open world where flying is only half the fun. The title of the third film was recently revealed as "The Hidden World" to boot, which that couldn't be more spot-on with our tie-in premise.

Players would customize their character and take on quests for Hiccup and his friends to continue charting the world, and along the way, they'd discover new dragons much like in the television series. Players would customize and level up dragon companions, and also adapt to different play styles with varying weapons and combat maneuvers as they tame wild dragons and fight their oppressors. This adaptation could be unique by allowing players to work with and command their dragons to do all sorts of things with platforming, puzzles, or combat.

The Purge – Rockstar Games
What if you could do anything without consequence? That's what The Purge films explore with  an exaggerated premise involving a single night where authorities turn a blind eye to any and all crime. It may be a horrifying scenario, but it's a perfect fit for the battle royale genre, with a host of players that could duke it out from the streets of New York to the rural countrysides of Georgia. With Rockstar's history of making lawbreaking a good, old time, no developer is more suited to take the burgeoning genre and bring twists to it with The Purge.

Instead of just being a free-for-all where every player can be a lone wolf or forge tentative alliances, it'd be fascinating for the game world to generate targets (whether A.I. or even some players) that contribute to individual or team scores. The Purge films put the affluent and politicians in the most danger, so it'd be interesting to see how firefights would carry out if players want to risk death for big stakes or stick with eliminating the competition and completing smaller objectives. Perhaps the game could pit a small team with a targeted player in a fortress that can be custom-rigged with traps and security systems? On the other end, a swath of players on the outside are forced to work together to get inside. As to who would survive on the way or who takes out the target in the end? That's hard to say when betrayal is the name of the game.

Check out the second page to see the rest of our picks.

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