Double Fine Productionshas produced some of gaming’s most fascinating story-driven adventure games over the last 20 years. Despite having potential in the film industry, Double Fine’s founder andPsychonauts 2creative director, Tim Schafer, is not interested in turning the studio’s games into movies.
In his time, Schafer has demonstrated and evolved the storytelling capacity of video games. While working at LucasArts, Schafer worked on classic point-and-click adventure games likeFull Throttle,Grim Fandango, andDay of the Tentacle, games to this day remain at the top of the genre. After founding Double Fine, Schafer created experimental but just as iconic games likePsychonautsandBrutal Legendthat combined the studio’s talent for narrative with a plethora of different game mechanics. Formerly an independent studio,Double Fine was acquired by Microsoft in 2019, helping bring Psychonauts 2’s development to a close.
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In an interview with IGN, Schafer reveals his disinterest in adaptingany Double Fine gameinto film. Schafer spoke with IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey, explaining how the studio has received many film proposal pitches in its time, but were all subsequently turned down. “We often get approached by people saying, ‘Hey, can we turn this into a movie?’ but, you know it’s usually just a distraction,” Schafer states. For Schafer, his interests and passions lie in video game development, and developing Double Fine games into films would ultimately take away from what he really enjoys doing.
It is not as if Schafer is ignoring the potential success of Double Fine’s IPs in other mediums, but is more so simply uninterested in expanding them beyond video games. On the topic ofPsychonautsbeing a franchise that could go beyond games, Schafer acknowledges the amount of places it could be taken if adapted into other mediums, but ultimately thinks that “games are cooler than movies and tv, so it’s already peaked.“Video game films have a rocky track record of successanyway, so it’s probably to Double Fine’s interest to just keep doing what it does best by making video games.
Double Fine’s brand of creativityand wit has enabled the studio to be one of gaming’s most recognizable developers. Credit should go to Schafer and the rest of Double Fine in staying the course and not caving into the pressure of expansion. ExpandingPsychonautsor any other Double Fine game into film and TV would likely bring new faces to the video games, but at that point, they could also just play the games and interact with the stories themselves. In an age of universes and adaptions,Double Fine Productionsis simply not interested.
