Mega Man Movie Announced By Fox

Mega Man is the latest in the world’s most beloved video game series to be getting a movie adaptation, according to the Tracking Board. 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment announced they will bring the fan favorite series to the big screen. There hasn’t even been a title given to the movie yet, but many are already pessimistic about the thought of yet another attempt to bring video game franchises to the movie world.

The good news is that David Ready and Michael Finfer of Chernin Entertainment will be overseeing the movie’s creation and Peter Chernin will be the producer. Those are the guys behind the recent Planet Of The Apes films and together they have a solid biography of successful science-fiction and action movies. Chernin Entertainment has also worked on TV shows like Terra Nova and New Girl. On the Fox side of things, Mike Ireland and Ryan Horrigan will oversee the film.

Mega man is known as one of the most popular video game franchises in the world. The first game was released in Japan under the title Rock Man back in 1987 for the Nintendo Entertainment System and was Capcom’s first attempt at making a game specifically for home consoles rather than for arcades. The story revolves around Dr Light and the android lab-assistant he built, Rock, fighting the evil Dr Wily and his evil androids. Dr Light reconfigured his lab assistant into a battle droid and renamed him Mega Man.

Many are understandably pessimistic about the idea of a Mega Man movie adaptation. Ever since Super Mario Bros got a film adaptation in 1993, movie-goers have been swamped with bad video game films. Most recently we saw the movie adaptation of the Hitman series, Hitman: Agent 47, completely slammed by critics and fans alike. That movie is now sitting at 7% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and is not an exception to the rule. Video game movies are pretty much universally bad. It’ll be interesting to see if Mega Man can finally break that pattern.