Ubisoft Launches Movie Studio To Make Movies of Its Games 114
Variety reports that Ubisoft, the game studio behind Assassin's Creed, the Tom Clancy games and the recent Prince of Persia titles, has launched Ubisoft Motion Pictures for the purpose of turning its game franchises into TV and movie franchises.
"Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was brought to the bigscreen by Jerry Bruckheimer, with Jake Gyllenhaal in the lead. The 2010 pic grossed about $335 million worldwide. The publisher started expanding its reach in 2007, when it launched Ubisoft Digital Arts, a computer animation studio, which created Avatar's ground-breaking 3D vidgame. A year later, it acquired Montreal-based visual effects house Hybride Technologies."
Re:A good sign? (Score:5, Insightful)
I read the headline and face palmed myself so hard I passed out.
Had you used face palm oil, then your hand would have slid off harmlessly.
Re:A common mistake ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Game development and movie development are different skills, one is long duration interactive entertainment and the other is short duration passive entertainment.
True. However, the game-to-movie direction today has more promise than the movie-to-game direction. Games made from movie franchises tend to be track rides - you will follow the plot. On the other hand, a free-play game provides known characters and settings on which a screenwriter can build a plot - even when the game barely has one. ("Prince of Persia" comes to mind.)
Re:Great - I Can Avoid A Whole Class Of Movies (Score:5, Insightful)
Wanna sell me a movie ticket? Tell me a story, preferably with MOVIE STARS in it, not some bozo I've never heard of before that, incidentally, doesn't know squat about acting.
One of the last few movies that Ive seen for the first time recently had absolutely no one I had ever heard of, and it was probably one of the best movies I have ever seen. The movie was Winter's Bone. It shows that having a big name star in a movie does not make the movie good; in many cases, the big name actor either overshadows everything else, or simply plays every character exactly the same, without even subtle changes from film to film.