There’s a fine art to ruining something you love. Hollywood has been perfecting it for decades, and nowhere is that more obvious than in the world of video game adaptations. For every The Last of Us that somehow gets it right, there are at least five projects that either crashed and burned spectacularly or, in a rare act of mercy, never made it to the screen at all.

We’ve compiled two lists: the adaptations that did get made: and absolutely should not have: and the ones that remain ghost projects, quietly gathering dust in development hell. Consider that second group a gift.

Part I: Games That Got Adapted: And Suffered For It

We’ve seen some bold disasters in this space. Here are five adaptations that arrived, looked us dead in the eyes, and disappointed us thoroughly.

1. Assassin’s Creed (2016): A game with Renaissance Italy, parkour through cathedrals, a secret war between assassins and templars, Michael Fassbender, and somehow filmmakers managed to produce something that critics called a joylessly overplotted slog with almost no parkour in it; not exactly what you’d expect from a franchise that basically invented free-running spectacle as a genre.
2. Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021): After six Milla Jovovich films of varying quality (mostly “low”), fans dared to hope that a faithful, game-accurate reboot might finally do justice to Raccoon City: and they were wrong again, as this $25 million production managed to gross just $42 million worldwide before quietly killing any sequel plans, proving once more that a respectful adaptation and a competent one are two very different things.
3. Return to Silent Hill (2026): Twenty years after his first attempt, director Christophe Gans returned to the fog-choked streets of Silent Hill armed with less budget, worse CGI, and somehow even less psychological depth than before, delivering what critics accurately described as a hollow, bewildering experience that strips Silent Hill 2’s masterful study of guilt and grief down to a visually garish love story: the equivalent of adapting Crime and Punishment and forgetting to include the crime.
4. Doom (2005): The game that quite literally invented the concept of demonic carnage on Mars was adapted into a sci-fi thriller where the demons are just mutated humans with a genetic condition, a decision so spectacularly tone-deaf that it managed to unite critics and fans in rare, bipartisan disgust.
5. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997): The original Mortal Kombat film had charm, camp, and a genuinely fun energy: so naturally its sequel stripped out everything that worked and replaced it with bad CGI, a collapsing plot, and so many new characters introduced so thoughtlessly that even the most dedicated fans lost track; and yet, impossibly, a third film was already in pre-production before the second one’s reviews finished coming in.

Part II: Games That Could Have Been Adapted: But Weren’t, Bless the Universe

Now here’s where the real mercy lives. These are the adaptations that were announced, planned, staffed up, and eventually smothered by the kind of studio dysfunction that occasionally does us a genuine favor.

6. Warcraft 2: After the original 2016 film earned a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes but somehow grossed $225 million in China alone, director Duncan Jones publicly outlined a full trilogy: and the world held its breath waiting for a sequel that never arrived, which is probably fine, given that audiences who loved the original were mostly Chinese moviegoers drawn to the spectacle and not the raid boost WoW mechanics that actual Warcraft veterans were hoping to see honored on screen.
7. Halo: In 2005, the dream team of Peter Jackson producing, Neill Blomkamp directing, and Alex Garland writing was genuinely assembled for a Halo movie: and then Microsoft’s demands for creative control, Fox’s budget anxieties, and a room full of executives who couldn’t agree on anything sent the whole thing collapsing, with Blomkamp later channeling his orphaned ambitions into District 9, which turned out considerably better than a studio-compromised Master Chief vehicle probably would have.
8. BioShock: Gore Verbinski’s Version: Eight weeks from the start of principal photography, Verbinski’s vision for a $200 million, hard-R adaptation of one of gaming’s most intelligent narratives was cancelled by Universal executives who reportedly went silent in the boardroom when he told them the budget: a film about an underwater objectivist dystopia deserved better than being whittled down to an $80 million action movie, and frankly so did the rest of us.
9. Doom 2: Hell on Earth: Plans for a sequel to the already-disastrous 2005 Doom were in development while the first film was still shooting: a level of studio optimism that feels almost inspirational in retrospect: but box office reality intervened before humanity was subjected to a second round of “demons are actually just gene therapy gone wrong.”
10. Metal Gear Solid: Director Jordan Vogt-Roberts has been attached to a Metal Gear Solid movie since approximately the Mesozoic era, meeting repeatedly with Hideo Kojima and promising fans a faithful adaptation of one of the most narratively dense and deliberately unfilmable game franchises in existence; and while it remains technically “in development,” the decade-plus silence suggests that the movie industry, much like the games themselves, is currently hiding in a cardboard box hoping everyone forgets it’s there.

There’s a broader lesson buried somewhere in this wreckage, and it’s not that video games can’t be adapted: The Last of Us, Fallout, and Arcane have comprehensively disproven that. The lesson is that adaptation requires understanding why something works, not just recognizing that it does. The best game worlds aren’t just stories with controllers attached: they’re systems of agency, atmosphere, and player-authored meaning that don’t always survive the translation to passive viewing.

Sometimes the kindest thing Hollywood can do for a franchise it loves: or claims to love: is leave it alone.