While film adaptations of video games generally do well enough to make a profit sheerly because of the curiousity factor, a faithfully adapted title that was done well enough to bring in mainstream crowds could really make a smash in the box office. EA is going to take a stab at this, having signed a deal with the United Talent Agency to bring several games to the big screen.

It’s not yet been announced which games will be the first to receive the film treatment, but given that a majority of EA’s recent successes are sports games, they’ll likely turn to upcoming games like Dead Space or Mirror’s Edge (especially given the recent popularization of ‘free running’ in films like the newest Die Hard film and the previous James Bond flick Casino Royale) to cash in on a somewhat simultaneous release.

The biggest question this raises is whether or not EA considers video game films a truly valid idea that simply hasn’t been executed or not yet. While I doubt anyone could argue that video game novelizations are created/released for their importance to literature as opposed to simply being a relatively low-effort method of milking more money out of a franchise, the legitimacy of video game films as purely genre films is the real question here. Is EA truly committed to seeing the vision of the game makers played out on a different medium, or are they just trying to cut the major studios out of the picture and thus the earnings?