There was a time, not all that long ago, when movies based on videogames were surefire losers. The reasons varied, but the bottom line was the same: It just never worked out. In more recent times, though, that situation has turned around dramatically: The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a major hit, while The Last of Us—an HBO series rather than a film, but close enough—earned universal critical and commercial acclaim.
In light of that, you might think that Take-Two Interactive—home to game series including Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, XCOM, Mafia, Midnight Club, and Max Payne, all rife with cinematic potential—might harbor some movie-making ambitions of its own. But during today's quarterly investors call, CEO Strauss Zelnick—who actually served as CEO of 20th Century Fox back in the early '90s—said that's actually not the case at all because film and television projects are too risky for the "relatively small [economic] opportunity" they represent.
