Movie tie in games always get a bad reputation usually with good reason you just need to look at a few examples such as Total Recall, Jaws Unleashed, Street Fighter: The Movie, Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, E.T, Fight Club to name a few (note some of these are movies based on games).
The main problem is that the games are usually released alongside the movies and they try to emulate the movie. But a good movie and a good game have very different criteria. For example a good film should be around two to three hours long but a game should be around eight to forty hours (there are exceptions for both time lengths Portal for example). A game needs more action to story (in most cases) where as even mindless action movies have less action percentage wise to a mindless action game, The Raid compared to Call of Duty for example.
Films which are story driven can have no fights or action in it where as games such a Mass Effect can still have a lot of action the only game that is story driven without fighting or action is maybe Heavy Rain.
I think another problem is that publishers are trying to attract movie goers who don’t play games to play their games. You need a different mindset for each activity you need to put more time into a game unless it is a series of movies like Lord of the Rings. The game developers should release games well after the release of the film see what people liked, didn’t like and how well the film did.
In closing I think taking ideas, concepts or characters from films is okay but don’t base an entire game around it. Also wait until after the release of the movie in case it is terribly received.
