Sydney Sweeney is appearing in the news for video game to film adaptations for the second time this week. After a report from Deadline that Sweeney would be teaming up with Michael Bay to adapt SEGA's Out Run into a movie, Variety reports that Sweeney is now teaming up with Wicked director Jon M. Chu to adapt Hazelight's Split-Fiction into a film.
Sweeney is slated to be an executive producer and will also star in the movie. Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, the same writers behind Deadpool & Wolverine, will write the script.
Variety previously reported that a Split-Fiction movie was happening, but now we know some of the key creatives behind the project. While Sweeney will play one of the lead roles between Zoe and Mio, characters named after Hazelight Studio head Josef Fares' daughters, it's not yet decided which role Sweeney will play.
In the case of a game like Out Run, it isn't easy to see what shape a film adaptation of that game will take. The opposite is true for Split-Fiction, which, despite having a predictable story, is ripe for a film adaptation with plenty of opportunities for big blockbuster movie moments in its fantasy and sci-fi settings.
The next big questions now are who will star alongside Sweeney, how Chu will bring some of the magic he brought to Wicked to Split Fiction, and whether the story can't be punched up in a new medium with its film version.
So far, in the renaissance of video game adaptations to movie or TV show adaptations, we've not seen an adaptation surpass the game in terms of storytelling. Some changes have been praised, but there hasn't yet been an adaptation where we could definitively say the story is improved in the adapted version. Split-Fiction feels like the perfect candidate to break that ceiling.
