Psychonauts 2, the most recent game from Double Fine, was met with overwhelming praise on its release. Eurogamer’s Edwin Evans-Thirlwell called it “witty, eccentric and imaginative” during his review, noting it had a “more developed understanding of mental health” than its predecessor. More recently, the mix of hallucinogenic gameplay and emotional storytelling won Psychonauts 2 the Game of the Year accolade at the New York Game Awards. But even with this success, Double Fine’s founder Tim Schafer revealed that a movie adaptation of any of his games is not something he is interested in. Speaking to IGN, Schafer stated: “We often get approached by people saying, ‘Hey, can we turn this into a movie?’ but, you know, it’s usually just a distraction. “I think games are what I really care about and what I like to make and what I think are interesting. It comes up every once and a while, but it’s never turned into anything. I’ve had a lot of free lunches out of Hollywood.” This is not to say Schafer doesn’t think Psychonauts wouldn’t make a good movie. He agrees there is a lot of stuff that could be done with the video game title. It is more that Schafer feels games are “cooler than movies” and therefore Psychonauts has “already peaked”. In the same article, Schafer said he had previously been approached about a Full Throttle movie. In a bid to win him over, Warcraft director Duncan Jones wrote him an entire script to showcase just what a Full Throttle movie adaptation could be. However, while Schafer thought that the script was good, noting Jones was clearly a fan of the game, ultimately nothing came of it. In the words of Schafer himself, “you know, LA and Hollywood, they are just a big whirlpool of lunches”.
