A popular video game franchise being adopted into a Hollywood Blockbuster is nothing new. A fifth Resident Evil movie was just released last month, and a new Silent Hill film is set to release later this month.
But games aren't often adapted into TV series. The most recent ones that jump immediately to various Sonic cartoons and anime, and before that there were the dreadful Mario and Zelda shows from the late 80s.
Now EA is licensing out Bad Company, the slightly more light-hearted spinoff series of Battlefield, to Fox.
Deadline Hollywood reports that the series is being produced by Alias' John Eisendrath, Sony, and most bizarrely of all, Adam Sandler's company, Happy Madison. The series' four main characters will return. "It follows four renegade soldiers as they exit military life and enter the private sector. But trouble is never far behind as they realize their commanding officer had used them to further the ends of a shadow unit within the government and now wants them dead to cover his tracks."
EA's Patrick Bach and Patrick O'Brien will be executive producing the series along with Eisdendrath and Happy Madison's Doug Robinson.
Specific production details have yet to emerge. What's clear right now is that the episodes will be an hour each and the show is being pitched as 'action comedy.' It will be interesting to see if a TV adaptation can break the curse of terrible game-to-other media adaptations. The fact that they're retaining the original character cast from the games is encouraging, as is the fact that they seem to be respecting the comedic side of the series.
I wonder what this means for the prospect of a Bad Company 3, though.