3D Realms founder and Max Payne game producer Scott Miller has aired his grievances, 16 years later, about the 2008 movie starring Mark Wahlberg – but thinks Hollywood should give the series another shot. "When the Max Payne film was released and I saw it day one in 2008, I was instantly disappointed and super upset," Miller wrote in a lengthy post on Twitter , which you can read in full below. "The story had changed dramatically from the original script we sold to FOX.
The issue was that the film's director revised the script such that it no longer resembled the game's story." Miller added that he let "everyone around [him]" know that the film was a "disaster." That even included emailing the studio with a "dozen" key things wrong about the adaptation of the 2001 shooter that helped put Remedy on the map.
Max Payne, starring Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, and Ludacris, was a loose adaptation of the first Max Payne game. It grossed $85 million from a $35 million budget, but fared poorly with critics and audiences alike. The 2008 noir movie currently sits at 16% on Rotten Tomatoes .
Despite the experience, Miller believes Hollywood's current track record of video game movies and shows – perhaps ignoring the Borderlands-shaped elephant in the room – gives him hope that things could go much better the second time around. "I think current Hollywood has reached a point of getting things right more often than not, so they'd likely be able to do Max Payne right if they tried again.