Disney+ Deep Cut: The Time Disney Tried A Video Game Adaptation And Failed To Launch A Franchise

Disney+ Deep Cut is a recurring feature looking at some of the more obscure or interesting items in the Disney+ library.

Over the last couple of decades, video games have become a more frequent source of inspiration for big-budget films. Nearly every studio has tried its hand at one game adaptation or another. While we've recently seen some real success with mainstream adaptations like the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, most game adaptations end up getting panned by both critics and the fans of the games they are based on.

For a studio like Disney, it’s been much more common for video games to be based on their characters than to make movies based on games, but there was one time that Disney tried and failed to launch its own franchise based on a video game: 2010’s Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.

The Prince of Persia movie seems to have been largely forgotten by history. Perhaps this is because the movie isn't actually all that bad. It's not a masterpiece, but a lot of video game movies are actually perfectly decent, and this is one of them. It's also a somewhat surprising movie to discover when searching around Disney+ because it’s a rare case where Disney entered into a licensing deal in order to use somebody else’s IP rather than to use its own.

What Was The Prince Of Persia The Sands Of Time?

The Sands of Time was an adaption of the same-named 2003 video game that successfully rebooted Prince of Persia as a video game franchise, but while key elements from the game are used, they tell a very different version of the story. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the prince, names Dastan, who accompanies his brothers in an invasion of the holy city of Alamut that is rumored to be producing weapons they plan to use to fight the Persian Empire.

Dastan’s father is killed following the battle, and the prince is suspected of murdering his father, causing him to flee with Tamina (Gemma Arterton) the princess of Alamut, and a mysterious dagger that it turns out has the ability to reverse time.

The dagger and its abilities come from the game, as does the unlikely, and somewhat unwilling, relationship between the two heroes. The rest of the story is largely new, but it was co-written by Jordan Mechner, the man who created the original game, so it had promise.

Prince Of Persia Was An Attempt To Recreate The Pirates Of The Caribbean Magic

The modern Disney company is still the king of animation, and thanks to the acquisitions of Star Wars and Marvel, it's found success in live-action films as well. But when it comes to purely Disney-branded properties, only the Pirates of the Caribbean films have given the studio its own successful modern live-action franchise. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was an attempt to recreate that same magic, as it came from the same producer Jerry Bruckheimer.

The similarities between the two franchises are pretty easy to see. One could easily envision Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley in the roles played by Gyllenhaal and Arterton. Alfred Molina even plays a sort of comic relief mentor with unclear motives that feel like an attempt to recreate Jack Sparrow, though Molina’s part is significantly smaller.

The Sands Of Time Isn’t A Lost Masterpiece, But It’s Fun And Worth A Look

While Prince of Persia The Sands of Time wasn’t a Pirates of the Caribbean size hit, it did become the highest-grossing movie based on a video game up to that point in time. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to transform the film into the franchise it was aiming to be.

Still, rewatching the movie for the first time since it came out, I can’t argue that I didn’t have some fun with it. Perhaps if it had been given a sequel it could have found its footing and become something excellent. If you have a Disney+ subscription and you happen to come across this one, give it a look.