According to Sega president and COO Shuji Utsumi, back when he was working with PlayStation, he asked various Hollywood studios if they would be interested in making a movie for Crash Bandicoot. This news comes via an interview with The Game Business, who talked with the Sega boss at Summer Game Fest. While that news may come as a shock to long-time fans of the orange marsupial who look at current video game movie successes that Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, and more are having, this is a discussion that happened way back in the 90s.
Why Did Crash Bandicoot Not Get a Movie?
These days, Shuji Utsumi is being recognized most for helping bring Sega back into a state of relevance in a big way. The recent Sonic the Hedgehog movies have been massive successes and many are looking forward to the upcoming return of games like Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi, and more Sega classics. Over the last 30 years, he’s had a role in the creation of Kingdom Hearts, the Sega Dreamcast, and the original PlayStation. So, why no Crash Bandicoot movie?
Utsumi says that none of the Hollywood studios took him seriously because video games were still viewed as a toy at the time. According to his LinkedIn page, Utsumi was working at Sony between 1993-1996 and apparently left the company right around when the original Crash Bandicoot game was released in September 1996. It’s likely that these talks were being had well before that time, so not only were video game movies at that time almost universally terrible, but Crash had not made a name for himself yet.
It is interesting to think what a movie would have looked like, though. We would hope that it would have been an animated attempt, especially since Universal had animated test footage for that original game that was cut before release.
