New idea to involve producer of Hellboy and Tomb Raider films; ex-executive VP Danny Bilson adds that his old company "couldn't change fast enough."
The former executive vice president of THQ, Danny Bilson, announced a new sci-fi fantasy horror project during the GameHorizon conference in Newcastle, UK.
According to the presentation (via Eurogamer), Bilson said that the project is a game-and-film tie-in reminiscent of SyFy and Trion World's Defiance project. His partner in the project is Lloyd Levin, producer of films like Watchmen, Tomb Raider, and Hellboy. He has yet to announce his distribution partner.
He plans to launch three two-hour episodes per year, while releasing a narrative of three to four interactive chapters in-between the episodes. He continues, "Let's take the fan from the film through three chapters of the game right into the next film. We've got the writers of the film writing the game narrative. We've got the actor's likeness, voice, and the players--fans--can participate in the narrative, up to a point, and then rejoin the film narrative, and it's all delivered on the same devices: the PC, the pads, or any digital device."
He added that no one has ever been able to move a story from a linear to an interactive form back-to-back because there's a barrier between the filmmakers and game developers that restricts them from taking creative liberties with that story.
He also said a few things about his time in THQ during the conference. He said that the company "couldn't change fast enough" from a licensed games-making company to a core games publisher. He said that six out of the 17 studios under the company "didn't know what they were making," so he was given the task to manage their direction. During his time, he was also given control of both the production and marketing departments to fix the relationship between the two divisions.
