I used to write movie reviews, of a sort, and I’ve seen news on a couple of gaming-related film projects that I wanted to share with the community.

It’s not like gaming properties have a long line of illustrious contributions to film. In fact, it’s just the opposite. I mean, I’m sure you’ve all seen the poster child for bad fantasy that was the Dungeons & Dragons movie, right?

In the words of Wikipedia, “See Also: Mazes and Monsters.” That’s about all you need to know.

Of course, the sequel, Dungeons & Dragons: Wrath of the Dragon God, was better and more “like D&D,” but as a movie it still sucked pretty hard. We’ll never really know how the two compare, since Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t even deigned to rate the sequel (it would have been hard to top(?) the original movie’s 11% rating, though).

Next up on tap would be Underworld, which was pretty much classified by this lawsuit as a bonafide World of Darkness movie. (Yeah, I know the suit was settled, but White Wolf made out pretty good in the end.)

White Wolf’s World of Darkness property had a real licensed video project with the short-lived television show, Kindred: the Embraced.

Not sure if you’ve ever heard of Living Room Games, but these guys do own a couple of older properties that kicked ass back in the day. Maybe you’ve heard of Earthdawn? Anyway, these fellows got a production company on board to produce a teaser for a television version of their game, Digital Burn, a schlocky cyberpunk concept. If you’re brave, go over to this old website and download the trailer. Digital Burn trailer site

How about some new stuff in time for Gencon?!

But these are all in the past, and what I’m really interested in chatting about is the present and the future. Two projects have recently come to my attention, one of which looks like it’s actually premiering at Gencon next month! That one’s called Midnight Chronicles, based on the Midnight d20 campaign setting by Fantasy Flight Games. This movie’s had a pretty rough go of it, and been in production for several years (at first I thought there was a screening at the end of July, but that note has recently been clarified on their website as having been posted in 2006). The company has promised delivery of the film for the last couple of Gencons, but failed to bring anything other than extended trailers, so I’m a bit skeptical. Still, it’s on the schedule, so if you’re in Indy during the big show you might want to ask at their booth if it’s really going to happen! Showings are scheduled for:

Thursday, August 14: 11pm at the Westin Capital II room.
Saturday, August 16: 6pm at the Westin Capital I room.

The other project that’s “coming soon” is a film adaptation of Matt Forbeck’s legendary superhero vision, Brave New World (the product that launched Pinnacle, publishers of the awesome Deadlands RPG). I only recently found out that this was in production, but it looks like they’ve been rumbling about it for a year or so at this point. Here’s a link to Matt’s blog entries about the project.

There will be panels on the film at Gencon, currently scheduled for:

Thursday, August 14: 8pm at the Westin Chambers room.
Saturday, August 16: 8pm at the Westin Chambers room.

Got any other favorite film or television media based on our little hobby? Give them a shout out in the comments!