HBO Max has another big hit on their hands. After ending 2022 with the epic two punch of House of the Dragon and The White Lotus season two, they have begun strong with the already iconic Last of Us video game adaptation in 2023. This is already shaping up to become one of HBO Max’s signature tv shows. Maybe they should consider adapting another video game into a hit tv show now that they’ve proven they can do it right.

Conventional wisdom used to be that video games could not be made into decent adaptations. There were few decent adaptations on the big or the small screen so many video games that seemed perfect for their own series went completely ignored. Now that those days are officially over, which famous game series needs to be adapted next? Here are 10 video games HBO Max needs to adapt right now!

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

10 Assassin’s Creed

     Ubisoft

There’s no franchise more ready to be a tv series than the Ubisoft classic Assassin’s Creed. HBO could either do a standard series that explores one Assassin like Ezio Auditore over a lifetime of adventures, or they could do an anthology series that takes us to Ancient Greece in one season like in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey to a fully crewed pirate ship like in Assassin’s Creed Black Flag. The show could truly have it all. Though it might be hard for all of those historic buildings to agree that HBO can have an actor parkour all over them. There’s really no way to do Assassin’s Creed without a ton of parkour. It’s as essential as hidden blades and always being able to survive falling to a grizzly end by landing in a stack of straw.

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

9 Red Dead Redemption

     Rockstar Games

If HBO wants a story as epic as the one in Last of Us, the perfect candidate is the Rockstar classic Red Dead Redemption. It’s got all the action, drama, romance, heartbreak, and once again action that a tv show requires. The game series shows just how brutal and unforgiving the violence of the Old West was. What always starts as a bit of a fantasy ends in tragedy as the cycle of vengeance destroys the lives of every cowboy in the series. Thanks to shows like Yellowstone, the Western is all the rage right now. The only big question is whether they should start with John Marston’s story from the first game or begin with the prequel from Red Dead Redemption 2. It’s not like there’s a wrong answer.

Besides, they’ve still got all the costumes from Westworld. Now that the show’s been canceled, there is a giant Western-shaped hole in HBO’s lineup.

8 Uncharted

     Sony Interactive

If you want a show like Last of Us, why not just keep it all in the Naughty Dog family. While their zombie epic is by far their most famous game, they’ve also got the adventures of Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series. Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg recently tried to adapt this for the big screen, but it made very little impact on audiences. Maybe this just proves it needed to be a tv show all along. Though a television budget might have a bit of trouble with some of those Nathan Drake action set pieces. No one’s seen a tv show attempt feats like that.As a suggestion, maybe casting Nathan Fillion as Nathan Drake would be the key to the show’s success. There’s no way that show could fail.

7 Elder Scrolls

     Bethesda

House of the Dragon proved that Game of Thrones wasn’t a happy accident. HBO really does know how to do a fantasy series right! So what about adapting one of the most popular fantasy games of all time? The Elder Scrolls has a wealth of games, lore, and stories to explore. Of course, there’s little doubt that HBO would go for the most well known game, Skyrim. It features huge factions, giant battles, and the political intrigue HBO has proven that they love so much. They’ve also got dragons down, so why not feature the story where the protagonist hunts down dragons? Maybe Morrowind could be like season 4…

If Elder Scrolls isn’t their thing, maybe they could consider Dragon Age? Either way we get awesome dragon fights and that’s all that’s really important here.

6 Mass Effect

     Bioware

Disney+ and HBO Max have been rivals since the very beginning. So far they both have provided high profile series that directly compete with one another. Last of Us is just another example of that considering the fact that they poached Mandalorian star Pedro Pascal. What HBO is really lacking, especially since canceling Raised By Wolves, is a space opera in the same world as all the Disney+ Star Wars shows.

The PERFECT counterpoint to Star Wars is Bioware’s space opera epic, Mass Effect. It has it all! A giant space apocalyptic event, a ton of aliens, and some brutal drama. Most importantly, it has one thing Disney+ doesn’t have. That would be a ton of NSFW romances. HBO does love that kind of thing.

Just maybe consider re-writing the ending to Mass Effect 3…

5 Half-Life

     Valve

Valve’s Half-Life is perfect for a pulse-pounding television series. It starts small with an accident at the Black Mesa facility leading to a full-blown international takeover. The show could begin during Half-Life 2, once the world has been changed for good. Then it could flash back to the first one, showing Gordon Freeman’s horrifying journey through Black Mesa. The only tragedy here is that they’ve waited too long to cast Bryan Cranston as the perfect Gordon Freeman.

More than anything else, making a Half-Life tv show would probably give us better chances of FINALLY getting a Half-Life 3.

4 Grand Theft Auto

How has no one adapted Grand Theft Auto yet? It’s got the over-the-top action of the Fast & Furious franchise mixed with the kind of brutal, bloody drama you get in a Scorsese film like Goodfellas and the kind of dark, twisted parody of American life you see in The Boys. Take literally any of the games to adapt or just create a new story in GTA’s universe. This show could be a huge deal if HBO fully commits to it. The series could be an anthology that takes us to Liberty City one season and Los Santos the next, like the games do, or we could just follow one character starting with nothing and working his way up the criminal world of GTA to his ultimate downfall. Rockstar games almost always have a downfall.

Of course, if they wanted to do a horror movie far scarier than anything in The Last of Us, just do a story about a new player trying to survive in GTA: Online. Clickers don’t come anywhere near that kind of terror.

3 Final Fantasy

     Square Enix

Netflix has shocked everyone in recent years by proving that video game adaptations can be incredible animated tv shows. Castlevania, Arcane, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and Dragon Age: Absolution were all fantastic adaptations of their games. The game series that is just begging to be an epic anime more than any other is Final Fantasy. There are a ton of stories to adapt, but there’s little doubt that they would begin with Final Fantasy VII. Cloud vs. Sephiroth is just an easier sell than any other game in the series. That being said, the season that adapted Final Fantasy VI would easily be the best. Kefka is the kind of villain who really needs a ton of screen time. Cast Mark Hamill and this will be incredible.

A secondary benefit to getting the rights to this series is that it prevents Disney+ from realizing they are sitting on a synergy goldmine with a Kingdom Hearts anime adaptation. That’s some underhanded brilliance right there.

2 Cyberpunk 2077

     CD Projekt

Cyberpunk 2077 has been the ultimate video game redemption story. It had one of the worst launches in video game history, but has slowly won its audience back as the game gets patched more and more each year. Now that the game is in a playable state, fans have fallen in love with the game’s universe. The success of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners proves that fans are eager to return to Night City again and again. An HBO show set in Night City could be a Game of Thrones level hit for HBO. Apple TV+ is already working on a similar Neuromancer series, so HBO needs to hurry up and start working on Night City already.

If they really wanted to put this adaptation over the top, they would convince Keanu Reeves to come back as his epic rockerboy, Johnny Silverhands. Literally no one who played the game would miss a chance at seeing him in live action playing “Never Fade Away” and flipping his pistol as he reloads it.

1 Bioshock

     2k Games

Bioshock is another video game franchise that has shockingly never been adapted. While there have been a few projects jump up and then get shot down like a Splicer over the years, maybe Last of Us will give us a proper chance at seeing the underwater city of Rapture brought to life. Netflix has been dancing around an adaptation of their own, but Bioshock fans have been burned before. The series has two different options for how to adapt it. The show could show the rise of Rapture and what life was like in the city before it fell into insanity. It could also introduce us to Rapture after the Splicers have gone insane. Either way, this is a great game to bring to the small screen.

The real draw of this series is that there’s nothing really like it on tv right now. It’s kind of a period piece. It’s kind of a science fiction thriller. It’s kind of a horror story. This show would be a real flex for HBO in the same way Last of Us is.

So HBO, would you kindly adapt Bioshock?