NEW YORK — Is there a more woe­be­gone movie genre than the video game ad­ap­ta­tion? This is the pan­theon of Max Payne, Wing Com­mander and As­sas­sin’s Creed. In the 27 years since the first video game movie, Su­per Mario Bros., these ad­ap­ta­tions have been so reg­u­larly mocked that you might think the genre was – like a tee­ter­ing fighter in Mor­tal Kom­bat sur­rounded by chants of “Fin­ish him!” – on its last legs.

And yet, Hol­ly­wood is in­creas­ingly view­ing video games as one of the rip­est, rich­est veins of in­tel­lec­tual prop­erty out­side of comic books. Even as much of the film busi­ness slowed over the last year, the hunt for the kind of IP that has fu­eled an over­whelm­ing share of world­wide box-of­fice ticket sales has con­tin­ued un­abated.

The video game movie isn’t fin­ished. It might even be just press­ing

“Start.”

On Fri­day, Warner Bros. re­leases a new, re­booted Mor­tal Kom­bat 26 years af­ter the first ad­ap­ta­tion of the mar­tial arts fighter. It was then just the fourth video game movie, com­ing on the heels of Dou­ble Dragon and Street Fighter, with Jean-Claude Van Damme. This was well be­fore the IP land rush started by Marvel’s suc­cess more than a de­cade later. Apollo 13 was the No. 2 film at the box of­fice in 1995.

Now, a blood­ier, R-rated Mor­tal Kom­bat sig­nals a new cy­cle for video game ad­ap­ta­tions. After years of mis­fires and flops, it’s lately seemed like a new level has been un­locked for one of the mov­ies’ most de­rided genres. In 2019, De­tec­tive Pika­chu, based on the Nin­tendo game, grossed more than $400 mil­lion world­wide for Warner Bros. Last year, Sonic the Hedge­hog be­came the genre’s high­est grosser; a se­quel is al­ready un­der­way. Net­flix, which on Wed­nes­day sug­gested it

may in­vest more deeply in gam­ing, has found one of its big­gest hits – the streamer’s an­swer to Game of Thrones – in The Witcher. The Henry Ca­vill-led se­ries is based on a fan­tasy novel se­ries that found fame as a pop­u­lar video game.

No one is en­grav­ing Os­cars or Em­mys yet. But it may be that video game ad­ap­ta­tions aren’t cursed, af­ter all. They were just go­ing through some grow­ing pains.

“Comic-book IP is the big­gest IP in the world right now and yet it took 40 years to re­ally get into the spot­light and it took 50 years to be­come the big­gest thing,” says Mat­thew Ball, a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist and for­mer head of stra­te­gic plan­ning for Am­a­zon Stu­dios. “Video game adap­tions have been hap­pen­ing since the early ’90s but we see a lot of ev­i­dence that peo­ple are learn­ing – they’re train­ing. At some point in the near fu­ture, I would be shocked if we didn’t have on a re­cur­ring ba­sis one of the big­gest films

and TV se­ries of the year com­ing from video games.”

Hol­ly­wood’s hunt for IP with built-in global fan­bases has found more dead ends over the last de­cade than new di­rec­tions. But gam­ing is unique in its scope and growth. Last year, the gam­ing in­dus­try was worth more than $150 bil­lion. By 2023, rev­e­nue will reach $200 bil­lion, Juni­per Re-

search has fore­cast, ex­ceed­ing the size of the film in­dus­try. A study re­leased this week by con­sult­ing firm Deloitte found that the top en­ter­tain­ment ac­tiv­ity of Gen Z – those aged 14-24 – is play­ing video games, rank­ing over mov­ies or mu­sic by a wide mar­gin.

Ruth­er­ford Falls is hi­lar­i­ous, swears star Jana Sch­mied­ing. But hid­den be­neath the laughs, she said, is a nec­es­sary, long over­due con­ver­sa­tion about the era­sure of Na­tive Amer­i­can voices.

Set in a sleepy up­state New York town, Ruth­er­ford Falls, which pre­miered Thurs­day on Pea­cock, fo­cuses on two best friends who find them­selves at a cross­roads while con­front­ing dual sides of a shared his­tory.

One of them, Nathan Ruth­er­ford, played by Ed Helms, is de­scended from an an­ces­tor who claimed the town as his own gen­er­a­tions ago — de­spite the thriv­ing In­dig­e­nous com­mu­nity al­ready there.

The statue of his name­sake rel­a­tive is at the heart of a story that finds Nathan wres­tling with his white priv­i­lege while his best friend Rea­gan Wells, played by Sch­mied­ing, re­claims a place in her own com­mu­nity, which has turned away from her af­ter a run­away bride sit­u­a­tion that saw her skip town while she earned dual mas­ter’s de­grees.

“We didn’t want the Na­tive sto­ries to be de-cen­tered,” said Sch­mied­ing, 39, a Cheyenne River La­kota Sioux co­me­dian who was hired as a staff writer for the show be­fore even­tu­ally be­ing cast as a co-star.

“It was re­ally im­por­tant that our voice has equal ground to the white voice, es­pe­cially when we’re in con­ver­sa­tions about his­tory. That’s sort of the point: to chal­lenge his­tory and the be­liefs that we hold true and to see how dif­fer­ent peo­ple re­act to a chal­lenged nar­ra­tive,” she told the Daily News.

Be­hind the scenes, Ruth­er­ford Falls boasts one of the larg­est In­dig­e­nous writ­ers rooms on TV, in­clud­ing co-cre­ator Si­erra Teller Ornelas.

And be­yond its staff­ing, writ­ing and cast­ing, Ruth­er­ford Falls dem­on­strates from the first ep­i­sode its will­ing­ness to put most of the at­ten­tion on the In­dig­e­nous sto­ries that so rarely get told. It cel­e­brates those sto­ries, too. But pri­mar­ily, it wants to force its view­ers to reckon with the nar­ra­tive they’ve ac­cepted.

“Some­thing that we need to reckon with when it comes to rac­ism and op­pres­sion is that it hap­pens with a smile more of­ten than it does with vi­o­lence,” Sch­mied­ing said.

“We have sys­tems in place that work to dis­em­power en­tire groups of peo­ple. I think Nathan is just, while he is a dear friend and com­pas­sion­ate to Rea­gan, he has an en­tire ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem at his back. He has the lived ex­pe­ri­ence of hav­ing his his­tory hon­ored and cel­e­brated and re­garded glob­ally.”

And in a nod to­ward boost­ing the In­dig­e­nous tal­ent that doesn’t get seen on the small screen, but is an in­te­gral part of the show, Ruth­er­ford Falls cre­ators took items made by or pro­vided by the Na­tive cast and crew to fill up Rea­gan’s fic­tional cul­tural cen­ter.

As they cross the fin­ish line of the Glass City Mara­thon on Sun­day, run­ners will be re­warded with a shiny medal to com­mem­o­rate the ac­com­plish­ment — 26.2 hard-fought miles.

But what to do with that medal once the pho­tos are snapped and the brief op­por­tu­nity to wear such jew­elry with­out rais­ing eye­brows has waned?

Add it to the col­lec­tion.

For the sea­soned ath­letes of the Toledo Road­run­ners Club, it can be easy to build up a frankly over­whelm­ing col­lec­tion of mem­o­ra­bilia. There are the med­als and rib­bons pre­sented to fin­ishers, the plaques and tro­phies pre­sented to win­ners; some sen­ti­men­tal run­ners save their race bibs and trea­sure their in­cluded-in-reg­is­tra­tion T-shirts.

Some are right­fully val­ued me­men­tos, tes­ta­ment to the hard work that brought them to the fin­ish line of their very first race or of a pres­ti­gious course like the Boston Mara­thon; Belle­vue’s Vicki Schoen said she makes it a point to save her hard­ware from the Glass City Mara­thons. Others med­als and plaques and tro­phies, though, pile up less in a much less sen­ti­men­tal fash­ion through years of race af­ter lo­cal race.

“It was get­ting out of con­trol, ac­cord­ing to my wife,” said Syl­va­nia’s Mark Stender, one of many club mem­bers who’s been forced to con­sider medal man­age­ment. A run­ner since high school, Mr. Stender fig­ures he’s been in hun­dreds of races, and plans to add one more to his count in Glass City’s Sav­age 5K on Satur­day.