Strange Scaffold’s 2023 hit El Paso, Elsewhere is the next indie game in line to have it narrative transferred to the big screen. According to Deadline, LaKeith Stanfield is being tapped for the role of protagonist James Savage. Di Bonaventura Pictures and Colin Stark are set to produce.
El Paso, Elsewhere was one of my favorite games of 2023, and that was almost entirely because of its narrative. While its gameplay was a neo-noir shooter in the style of Max Payne, the story is of a demon hunter trying to stop his abusive vampire ex-girlfriend from ending the world. While the concept may sound otherworldly on the surface, it delves with meticulous detail into emotional abuse and its effects on the victim.
I’m not at all sure how well that will translate to film as it’s entirely set within an abstract, ethereal world hidden beneath a motel. The characters only interact with each other during vignettes where James descends the floors in a hostile elevator. It lends well to the cutscene-level-cutscene flow of a video game, but for a compelling to watch experience, this will need to be extrapolated on. Thankfully, there’s a lot of backstory and worldbuilding around the core game.
While the game’s developer, Xalavier Nelson Jr., has acknowledged the movie, it hasn’t yet been stated if he will be involved in the creation process.
It’s a weird time we’re living in where game-to-TV adaptations like Castlevania and Fallout are finding praise and niche titles like El Paso, Elsewhere and Iron Lung are being adapted to film. I still prefer playing games to watching absolutely anything, but I never thought I’d see the day where justice was being done to the medium.
There’s no set timeline for when we might see the El Paso, Elsewhere film.
