The showrunner of the animated Devil May Cry series, Adi Shankar, has issued a direct warning to the industry. According to his statements, most of the video game adaptation announcements we see today will end up in the trash or be an embarrassing product. His diagnosis is clear: the problem is not the source material, but who makes the creative decisions.
The technical key lies in the creative control of the original developer 🎮
Shankar argues that the determining factor for a successful adaptation is that the original creator of the video game leads the project. Without their vision, film and television studios often distort the essence of the product. This explains why titles like The Last of Us or Arcane work: their creative teams were present at every stage of development. In contrast, projects where the licensing studio imposes its own criteria usually result in generic products that fail to connect with the player base.
Spoiler: the studio that bought the rights won't ask for your opinion 🚨
In other words, what many of us feared is confirmed: the studio that pays the big bucks for the rights often thinks it knows better than the person who designed the game. It's like buying a guitar and suddenly thinking you're Jimi Hendrix. Shankar says it clearly: if there's no respect for the original source, the result will be a Frankenstein that neither fans nor the general public will want to see. And in the meantime, we'll keep waiting for that adaptation everyone talks about but no one dares to do right.