Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin has provided an exclusive and promising update on the Bloodborne film to IGN.
While speaking with IGN about becoming the new elusive target in Hitman (out today), we naturally had to ask McLoughlin for an update on the Bloodborne movie, which he is producing. I pointed out that it’s been over six months since the animated film was first announced, and at that time, it didn’t have a writer or a director attached. McLoughlin confirmed to IGN that the film now has a writer and a director, and the movie is making great progress.
“Things are obviously much more along the pipeline than they were back then,” he said. “It’s one of those things that I personally would love to just say everything as a fan of this thing, but then there’s no expectation, or there’s no fun in the process. So we definitely have a lot more stuff mapped out where we’re going with the story, and there are people in place to make this thing happen. Hopefully sooner than later, we can have announcements where we talk about who’s involved and where it’s going, and little teases of the story and where we’re at with that.
“But I am proud of the work I’ve been doing on it. I think it’s such an interesting job to have, and for me, it’s fun to do. It can be really stressful as well at the same time because you’re taking on such a monumental IP. And I am just there to be like, ‘Hey, we need this pinprick perfect.’ Will we ever get something perfect? I don’t know. It’s probably impossible to get everyone’s expectations into one central pillar, but as someone who’s brought on to do this job, I’m right in the position where I need to be, and we’re poised to have something really cool.”
As of right now, the team behind the film is keeping a lid on who the writer and director are. It’s unclear when we’ll learn more, but there are ample opportunities for reveals on the horizon – perhaps at The Game Awards this December, or during another gaming event next year. Speaking more about how the team is trying to translate Bloodborne to a new medium, McLoughlin noted that there’s a big difference in how Bloodborne is an animated movie and Alex Garland’s Elden Ring will be live action.
“We all have pie-in-the-sky dreams of doing that and making a huge story. And I guess we’ll see what happens with Elden Ring, but even I don’t think they’re doing [the entirety of] Elden Ring. I’m sure they pick one part of that to be able to do because I mean, it’ll cost you $600 million to do Elden Ring in live action.
“It’s just the amount of time, effort, pieces moving, the amount of financials needed in place; is it even a smart decision to do it live action at that point, when there’s a lot of stuff that you’d be able to do in animation that you can’t do in live action, or you wouldn’t nail down? And I think Bloodborne specifically is poised to do that well, because there’s so much otherworldly aspects in that that would just be so cool to be able to blow the doors off animated rather than being like, ‘Okay, put you in front of a green screen, and let’s hope for the best.’ Now, we can really whittle it down into something cool.”
On the subject of the Elden Ring film, I also asked if his team has a plan to take any lessons from that project and apply it to the Bloodborne movie, or if there’s such a difference in how they’re making their respective movies that it won’t be applicable.
“I mean, probably a bit of both. It is sort of a thing that it’ll come out before ours. So you look at it and go, ‘Okay, well, what did they do? What was their idea? Are we doing the similar things?’ But I mean, Bloodborne and Elden Ring are so far apart from each other. The structure maybe is similar, but in terms of story [one is] Victorian England [and the other is] gods and a mountain [which are] very different from each other. So I would like to not take influence too much because you don’t want to repeat the same things. And if it comes out, people are going to be upset, happy, indifferent. It’s going to be a huge wide gamut of what people enjoy about different things. So hopefully give something people they don’t expect, give them something that’s interesting. And at the end of the day, it’s all ‘Why are we adapting it?’
“I don’t want to adapt something if we’re just going to tell the same stories with the same characters over and over and over again. Movies are a completely different medium than video games. What do movies do better than a game does? It’s passive versus interactive, so how do we push and pull with that and play with different ideas? I think I don’t want to be involved in an adaptation if it doesn’t feel like there’s a story worth telling within it or if it’s not a good idea.”
He went on to note that this isn’t the first time he’s taken a crack at a video game adaptation, as he’d previously tried to bring Soma to life, as well. Across all of these experiences, he hasn’t had any interest in simply redoing the game in a new medium, but instead wants to find new stories that can expand universes, not unlike the Fallout series or the recent Resident Evil film.
“Whenever there’s leeway in the story and there’s latitude to tell different tales within universes, I think that’s always most interesting. I don’t really ever want to take an IP and just redo the game story. I think we’ve seen that happen so many times. I’m not going to name names of things, but people already have adaptations in their brains, but it just never really works out. Something like Fallout or Resident Evil are really good examples recently of for all intents and purposes, this is that world.
“We’re just shifting the lens a little bit and we get something really interesting within that space. So I think those stories are worth telling because I remember we were at the BAFTA games and Ben Starr did an interview with somebody and he was talking about adaptation, how they shouldn’t exist. And then everyone was tweeting at me being like, ‘Do you and Ben hate each other now?’ And I texted him being like, ‘Dude, we’re mortal enemies.’ But he has the right idea that why are we adapting it is always the number one question.”
