Saw & Insidious co-creator to adapt Cthulhu video game & movie
James Wan is reportedly looking to adapt The Call of Cthulhu short story into a movie and video game, according to a new report.
22nd Dec 2023 11:49
Focus Entertainment
Saw & Insidious co-creator to adapt Cthulhu video game & movie
James Wan is reportedly looking to adapt The Call of Cthulhu short story into a movie and video game, according to a new report.
22nd Dec 2023 11:49
Focus Entertainment
Fresh off Hideo Kojima revealing he'll be working with Jordan Peele (and others) on his latest title OD, it appears another horror director is making the jump to video games.
James Wan, best known as the co-creator of genre megahits Insidious and Saw, as well as the director of Malignant, The Conjuring, and the DCEU's Aquaman movies, is reportedly working on an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu.
James Wan's Cthulhu could get a video game adaptation
The news comes from Deadline, who report that the Sino-American fund Stars-Hana is looking to develop video games based on horror movies and that The Call of Cthulhu from Wan is one of those on the list.
It also says that Wan has been working on the project for around five years, taking the timeline back to 2018 and the first Aquaman movie.
The Call of Cthulhu is pretty iconic, even for those who haven't read it. Cthulhu's presence has been felt in TV, movies, and board games, and there's definitely a good chance you'll recognise the tentacle-faced deity if you've seen the Mind-Flayers in Game of the Year winner Baldur's Gate 3.
At the Mountains of Madness, another Lovecraft adaptation tied to Guillermo del Toro of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy, has long struggled to get off the ground.
Other potential video game adaptations on the Stars-Hana list run the gamut from the Chris Pratt Garfield movie to Sam Raimi's Every House is Haunted, as well as other James Wan movies Mass Extinction and GMO.
The strange history of Saw games
Saw's nature as a series all about making tough choices, with the occasional jump scare, made it an obvious candidate for a game and Zombie Studios developed one in 2009 for Konami.
The game received a mixed response from critics, with many slamming the controls and combat, but praising the soundtrack. It also raised some controversy through the "torture porn" accusations that dogged the film series, notably at a time when Konami refused to publish Six Days In Fallujah (a game that finally launched this year).
Still, it earned a sequel, set between the first and second movies and Saw II: Flesh and Blood was roundly panned by critics.
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Lloyd Coombes
Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.
