Ubisoft is working with one of the Producers on the Netflix Castlevania series Adi Shankar in order to bring multiple animated shows based on their properties to life. As reported by THR, coming down the pipeline is a Rayman series aimed at children, a “cyber-mystery” show based on the Watch Dogs series aimed at tweens, and lastly, a cartoon based on the Far Cry series standalone adventure Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon titled Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Vibe.
This comes as exciting news for many different reasons, the major one being the collaboration with Adi Shankar of the Netflix Castlevania series, seeing how much care was put into adapting said series from a simple NES game plot into an engaging, popular story that still carries the spirit of the series it was based on. Seeing how most film or television adaptations of video game properties often end in disappointment or disaster, ranging from the infamous Super Mario Bros. Movie to the atrocious Alone in the Dark film by Uwe Boll, having these series in the hands of somebody with proven experience in adapting video games to the screen is very reassuring.
Ubisoft has attempted to break into the realm of film and television before, generally with little success. There was a Rayman animated series released back in 1999, which planned to have somewhere between 13-26 episodes air, though only four were finished and released. There was also the live-action Assassin’s Creed movie from 2016, which was panned by critics, and flopped at the box office losing the studio nearly 100 million dollars, which might be cause for concern to anybody anticipating their upcoming attempt at a live-action adaption of The Division.
These poor results are concerning, but not unique, as historically nearly all television and film adaptations have turned out bad or done poorly; it’s only been in recent years where we’ve had mild to major successes like Detective Pikachu and Castlevania to give us hope for the future.
Hopefully, the Castlevania lightning can strike twice, and everything turns out in Ubisoft’s favor, and by extension the audience’s.
