Car-Jacker threatens to kill Iron Man

Hot off the heels of my last blog post, a lot of interesting news has emerged from the video-gaming world.

Leading the headlines is this story about how Hollywood is concerned with the proliferation of the gaming industry. Some are concerned that the up-coming Iron Man movie, may be ‘murdered’ by the popular video game Grand Theft Auto 4.

The Financial Times reported that John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, said that, “The buzz in Hollywood, which I heard from some Hollywood folks…is people are worried whether Iron Man the movie is going to get killed by Grand Theft Auto the game. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that before… There is more interest today from Hollywood to make movies out of our games than there is interest in our industry to make games out of their movies. There’s a big reset happening now.”

This bit of news comes as no surprise to gaming enthusiasts who recognize that video games based on movies generally sucks balls. Though admittedly, movies based on video games can be pretty bad too.

Grand Theft Auto is a huge gaming franchise. It features an open-ended world featuring a career criminal as its protagonist. It is digital escapism at its best, where the player can live vicariously through his digital avatar, gang-banging, committing mass murder and car jacking at will. It is the rainmaker for its parent company Take-Two Interactive, and is projected as having a weekend opening comparable to Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End.

In other news, my younger kid brother went into a spiralling depression when 1up reported that Kaplan is developing a SAT prep test using the Nintendo DS.