The game has a ready audience of around 350 million – but are they really going to sit through 120 minutes of plot and dialogue?
If there is a financial shoo-in more likely than the prospect of Fortnite: The Movie making hundreds of millions of dollars at the global box office, it must be a rare thing indeed. One can easily imagine Peely, the giant banana-shaped soldier of digital fortune who is a popular playable character in the game, with his eyes lit up at the prospect of all those V-Bucks (Fortnite’s in-game currency). This is a title with more than 350 million players worldwide. It is a behemoth that constantly reinvents itself in ways that encourage players to keep spending money, and has become so confident in its own financial weight that its creator, Epic Games, is currently going mano a mano with Apple over fees the latter charges for enrolment in its App Store.
A big-screen version, it is rumoured, is moving closer and closer. And it would no doubt be a tremendous success. Fortnite players, even if Epic could not coax them into the cinemas, could be lured into virtual multiplexes within the game itself, a trick the company has already begun pulling off with DJ appearances and live concerts. The games studio could bypass the Hollywood machine, just as it is attempting to circumnavigate Apple. When your product is this addictive, you have a worldwide user base, and you also control the medium by which your audience accesses the good stuff, the result should be like one of Fortnite’s own magical treasure chests. Knowing Epic Games, it will probably find a way to sell virtual popcorn to players at 1,000 V-Bucks a pop.
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Originally posted in the guardian.
