Alexandre Macmillan’s Post

Love that #fallout has been successful on TV. Thought it was going to be hard to eclipse #TLOU but it seems to be on the right track. From a people perspective we are seeing more and more requests for crossover talent between interactive entertainment and broader media. It’s exciting! It also helps that our global gaming, media and sports practice is set up to support this trend! ;) #transmedia #executivesearch #interactiveentertainment #videogames

Great insights from #transmedia pioneers @ Skybound on how to maintain appeal while adapting an interactive medium like #videogames into a passive one like #Films/TV #series. Goldman highlights how paramount intrinsic game and show quality are to the initiative's success, and how day & date transmedia releases do not necessarily serve the wider franchise and may even be detrimental to multiplayer social games / live service #IPs a la #Fallout. A few personal favorites: - "Focus on the bedrock of [your] franchise – the video games themselves – before seeking expansion elsewhere. [...] If you don't have an awesome game, you don't have any advantage in making a TV show compared to any completely original pitch from somebody else. " - "There's this concept of ‘primary and ancillary’ but you can't think that way anymore – everything is primary. [...] If you have a great show and you make an okay game, the gamers are going to roast you, and if you have a great game and you make an okay show, no one's gonna watch it." Looking forward to future developments in that space! Full article available here: https://lnkd.in/e3Z5U_gd #entertaintment #marketresearch #gaming #movies #franchises

There’s a lot of video games set to get TV or film adaptations in the next few years, and even more that seem like they’d be ripe for the picking. Bungie’s Destiny franchise seemed like a viable candidate, especially after the studio was acquired by PlayStation in 2022, but it sounds like any plans to bring the games to a new medium are have currently been dashed. Will the Fallout TV Series Radiate the Tone of the Video Games? According to Forbes’ Paul Tassi earlier in the week, Bungie was reportedly “tossing around” ideas for an animated Destiny series on Netflix before things fell apart.. Allegedly, this was in development prior to the aforementioned PlayStation acquisition, during which Sony said it would help Bungie “nurture the IP they have in a multi-dimensional manner.” (For extra context, this statement was made a few weeks before the Uncharted movie released and became a decent box-office success.) In regards to why it didn’t go forward, Tassi wasn’t sure, though he did say it just may not have gone farther than the scripting phase. Destiny 2: Is There Any Way A Destiny Show Is Still Happening At This Point? Before Sony bought Bungie, the developer brought on Derrick Tsai as its transmedia head. Tsai was a producer and director at Riot who helped pave the way for Arcane to get made and become a hit over at Netflix. He departed around this time last year, after which the studio hired Warner Bros. alum Gabriel VanHuss to serve as the Destiny’s head of linear media. VanHuss holds that position to this day, and his duties involve expanding the franchise in TV, comics (which it’s previously done), movies, and so on. It’s hard to know where this hypothetical show currently stands: Bungie’s currently focused on the Final Shape expansion dropping in June, its new Marathon game, and still reeling from its highly publicized layoffs (to say nothing of possibly working on Destiny 3). According to Tassi, if the hypothetical show isn’t fully dead, it’s not coming “anytime remotely soon.” The idea of Destiny getting a TV show seemed like a cool idea two years ago, but it’s a little more dicey now. Bungie’s hoping to turn things around for both Destiny 2 and the company at large with Final Shape, and revealing a TV show weeks after the expansion drops could easily take things from “we’re so back” to “oh, it’s over” in a heartbeat. The series certainly has the potential to thrive in other mediums, but it’ll unfortunately have to be a waiting game until the smoke clears around The Final Shape. [via Eurogamer] Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. Source link By Nakisisa George

Equities analysts at Jefferies see long-term potential in Games Workshop Ltd (LSE:GAW)’s confirmed tie-in with Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN, ETR:AMZ), which will see the streaming giant translate the London-listed group’s popular Warhammer 40k franchise into film and TV content. "The potential for Warhammer to build its global exposure is clearly a huge opportunity," said analysts. The agreement, following a year of anticipation, grants Amazon the exclusive rights to adapt the Warhammer 40k universe, with potential expansion into the Warhammer Fantasy universe. Jefferies reasoned that Games Workshop could earn approximately US$1 million per episode based on a production budget of US$20-30 million per episode, with potential increases in follow-on seasons. More at #Proactive #ProactiveInvestors #Amazon #GamesWorkshop #Jefferies http://ow.ly/KR0810562bp

Nintendo is taking "The Legend of Zelda" from the console to the big screen, embarking on a live-action film adaptation of the beloved franchise. Following the success of their "Super Mario Bros" movie, Nintendo, in collaboration with Sony, will co-finance this cinematic venture, tapping into the rich storytelling of Zelda’s fantasy world. This move reflects a broader trend in bringing Japanese game franchises to global audiences, as seen with Netflix's "One Piece." Get ready for an epic journey with Link, as Nintendo continues to expand its horizons beyond gaming. Should be interesting. #Nintendo #ZeldaMovie #GamingNews #EntertainmentIndustry #DigitalTransformation

Call of Duty is 20 years old as of Sunday! This franchise undoubtedly changed the gaming landscape. I don't think there is a person playing video games now, that hasn't touched a Call of Duty title. Even people who stopped playing games a long time ago. Call of Duty is something that has been part of people's lives at some point and cemented itself as a household name! The amount of memories we collectively share for this franchise is more than can be put into a single post. How many disputes ended with "1v1 me on Rust?" On that note, out of all the Call of Duty games, What is your favourite map? or favourite entry in the long-running franchise? For me it's Terminal and the best game has to be Modern Warfare 2! #Videogames #CallofDuty #COD #Activision #Gaming #Gameindustry

The Walt Disney Company dropped a ton of announcements and the main focus was on the rebundling of sports content with what have always been their competitors - something myself and Mark Pannes and others have long believed was inevitable. I was much more interested in seeing the announcement of this investment in Epic Games to build new universes for their IP in the gaming world. I had previously presumed Electronic Arts (EA) could be a target as it makes Star Wars IP games and the sports franchise could be an interesting fit with ESPN and other sports rights its involved with. We are a part of the consumer industry and Sport / Media / Gaming are all part of this space. Finding ways to extend your IP into where people spend their time and money (go do some research on how big 'gaming' is) shows that despite the issues Iger faces he continues to try and reinvent the game even as the game is being changed around him. #sportsbiz #entertainment #gaming #investment https://lnkd.in/eXw8xrUP

Helldivers 2 has everyone talking about Starship Troopers and clearly the game makers were inspired by the film. Its obviously not the first game to borrow its concept from a film... Payday = Heat GTA = Scarface / Miami Vice Uncharted = Indiana Jones Metal Gear Solid = Escape from NY Cyberpunk 2077 = Blade Runner Many examples of this. One of the things we realized at Universal was that many of our bigger IPs had already been "done" as games - just not with our IP! Its not that these game makers wouldn't prefer to use the movie IP. But studios give you every incentive not to work with them. First, is the practice of minimum guarantees, a concept really borrowed from consumer products. I've seen so many potentially great deals killed because the MG being asked for simply was too big. The dev was willing to fund development, but couldn't also divert millions more in upfront advance payments. The dirty secret about these MG payments is they can't be realized as revenue until the termination of the deal anyway, and even then only as a one-time event, which has a poor quality of earnings because you killed the deal and won't anniversary it the next year! The second thing that kills these deals is franchise bureacracy. Sometimes, its overly constricting franchise rules - things like so much lore that there's no interesting creative space for game creatives to do something new. I remember with Star Wars, Lucas wanted us to set a new mobile game after Return of the Jedi but before Force Awakens. This meant we couldn't use Jedi, or Sith, or the Empire, or the First Order or most of the main characters (Luke was in seclusion.) Unsurprisingly, the game flopped. But it also often can just be complex approval issues. Many of these legacy IPs from the 80s or 90s have contracts that didn't explicitly contemplate video games. Or where actors had approval rights they don't want to give without a big payout. It can take months and even years to wade through it all. I've always felt Hollywood needed to get more serious about this - invest in promising IP by pre-clearing the rights, streamlining approvals and giving game creatives the latitude to reinvent the IP for games as a medium. Otherwise, its much easier for game makers to "borrow" your concept and create their own take on it which they can own and builds enterprise value for them, not you.

Why can't Warner Bros. Discovery stop talking about gaming lately? Gaming, with streaming, are the areas WBD is counting on for a much-needed growth story as its biggest business of legacy TV declines. But can WBD grow gaming enough on its own to make up for TV's decline, or will it have to turn to M&A? I talked to games chief David Haddad for Business Insider about having 2 of the hottest games of 2023 and his plans to keep the growth streak going. #videogames #streamingvideo #manda #tvindustry   https://lnkd.in/eADi843N

My latest Medium Shift column for The Information is live! I wrote about how in 2023, gaming and Hollywood increasingly overlapped in the zeitgeist. Gen Alpha and Gen Z are increasingly spending as much time gaming as they are streaming. And no legacy media company is positioned to take advantage of serving those consumers across both marketplaces. The problem is not new—Disney gave up on having gaming in-house in 2014 and pivoted to a licensing model—but Warner Bros. Discovery executives and Disney executives have been talking up the gaming business as a growth opportunity internally and also externally to investors. The attitudes toward gaming have changed, but the wholesale skillsets of these executives and the operational cultures of these legacy media businesses remain the same. If they want to succeed in gaming, those will need to change.