The Writer for Rogue One has expressed an interest in making a live action adaptation of Control, and developers Remedy Entertainment seem to be up for it. I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be incredible to have a movie, or a Netflix series, version of Control, but I can barely handle watching Inception without losing my mind. I think a live action version of Control would finally break me, but that doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen.
All of this has come about after a conversation between Remedy Entertainment’s Head of Communication and Gary Whitta, the Writer for Rogue One. In an AMA the writer was asked when game they’d like to see adapted into a movie, and they replied with Control. Whitta added that he’d be up for writing this adaptation too, which is when Thomas Puha of Remedy Entertainment popped in to show support. Of course that doesn’t mean anything will happen, but it does show that a link has been made here. Maybe we’ll have something in a couple of years.
Too Real
I love Control. I think it’s a really interesting game that subverts your expectations at every point. It shows just how far you can push reality in a normal space that wouldn’t look out of the ordinary in a number of workplaces, and that makes it pretty damn scary to me. Adapting it to a live action movie or series would be difficult, with a number of visual effects to wrap your head around, but if done right it would look insane.
SPOILERS – I’m going to talk about a section of the game now. If you haven’t played it and want to avoid spoilers, don’t read on.
The part of the game that uses the light switch is, in my opinion, genius. I grew up with one of these exact switches in my room, and it had never occurred to me that it might be a portal to some hub world between other portions of reality. It’s such a simple thing, turning the lights on and off, but sometimes it does feel like going between worlds, if it’s really dark that is. Seeing this with a live actor and hotel set would be mental, and it would drive audiences over the edge.
My only concern with a live action adaptation of Control is that it would be too obtuse. Audiences need to be walked through what they’re seeing these days, and that isn’t the case with Control. In the game, so much of the world and the things you see is explained through documents that you pick up, or what other people say around you. Nothing is firmly explained with a tutorial, even the tutorials give you instructions and let you figure out what to do yourself.
This adaptation could be brilliant, and it could be awful, depending on how the themes of the game are portrayed. Let me know if you’d watch it in the comments.
