It started as a joke and now may become a movie! Sports video games may be insanely popular, but they’re generally difficult to sell to Hollywood for a movie version, however Electronic Arts thinks they’ve found a way to do it with the insanely popular Madden series of NFL American Football games.
According to The Wrap, the film will be called Madden Curse, and will centre around the jinx that supoosedly affects players who appear on the cover of the Madden games. Some people take it very seriously, with LaDainian Tomlinson turning down the opportunity to appear on the 2008 cover of Madden. While the official reason given was because of contract negotiations, many believe it was because he was worried about the curse.
The story will follow a former Madden video game champion who is forced out of retirement just as he finds himself on the corner of the game’s cover, and subject to the curse. As yet it appears there’s no studio involvement, with EA developing it in house before they take it to potential partners (something which is happening more and more as companies try to retain control over their properties, rather than just selling the rights and potentially seeing Hollywood trash the franchise). It’s not known either if the film will involve the NFL, or if it’s being developed without them.
As for the curse, while many believe in it, it’s more to do with statistics and perception than anything else. It is true that a lot of people who’ve appeared on the cover of Madden game have lost their form shortly afterwards or suffered injury. However, you’re only going to get to the cover if you’re absolutely at the top of the game, which means it’s likely there’s only one way to go – down. It’s also true that in American Football, injuries are incredibly common, so it’s not unusual for them to affect top players. It’s similar to other so-called curses, such as one that’s supposed to affect people who appear on the cover of Sport Illustrated magazine, where again it’s more to do with the statistical likelihood of someone’s career going downhill from a spectacular, unusual high (with that high being the reason they were chosen for the cover of the mag), than an actual curse.