The Walking Dead S05E09 Still - H 2015
Gene Page/AMCLionsgate has made another major bet in the gaming space with a “significant investment” in game developer and publisher Telltale Games.
The two companies on Tuesday said they will jointly turn existing and original intellectual property into episodic games and TV. Telltale has made a name producing episodic games based on popular TV series such as The Walking Dead, which has sold 8.5 million copies, Game of Thrones and The Wolf Among Us, the episodic video game based on Bill Willingham’s Fables comic book.
Lionsgate earlier invested an unspecified amount in Finnish games developer Next Games to develop mobile and social media games based on its existing properties. That followed the mini-studio last year naming Peter Levin, a veteran digital dealmaker, as president of interactive ventures and games to help turn Lionsgate IP like The Hunger Games and Divergent into mobile and social platform games.
As part of the deal, Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer will also join Telltale’s board of directors. “Their leadership in narrative-driven episodic games, together with our investment and the potential opportunities created by our premium content expertise, will continue to strengthen their ability to offer exciting new avenues of storytelling to their next generation audiences across a broad range of platforms,” Feltheimer said in a statement Tuesday.
Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner in his own statement said the tie-up with Lionsgate will enable the episodic games producer to step up production of original games, while also moving into episodic TV production based on its game properties.
