Last year, Activision, with games like Spider-Man: The Movie, and Electronic Arts, with Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, struck gold with movie-to-game projects. Both games, executives for the companies note, were created with unusually high access to the films' makers, including having the movies' actors reprise their roles specifically for the games.
And at an average retail price of US$50 a game, the economics of translating a blockbuster movie into a game that could sell in the millions is attractive, many gamemakers and moviemakers note.
"I think what is going on is that everyone has realized that we are going after the same target audience," said Kathy Vrabeck, an executive vice president at Activision, referring to young males. "I'm not surprised to see more convergence of movies and video games, bringing that experience into the interactive realm where they can continue that experience for hours and hours."
Neil Young, an Electronic Arts vice president in charge of production for the company's Lord of the Rings game franchise, said he had video conference calls from his office in Redwood City, California, with Peter Jackson, director of the film trilogy.
"It is important to keep him in the loop," Young said. "We're trying to understand the language of the film and adopt and retain its core essence, but diverge in ways that are right for the game medium."
Trying to capture box-office lightning in a game cartridge is not new. Some of the first mass-market video games to emerge in the late 1970s were inspired by Star Wars.
But video games based on popular films have often disappointed gamers. For years, they tended to be marketing afterthoughts or blatant money grabs churned out with little more imagination than it took to flood the market with movie-themed lunch boxes and T-shirts, critics note.
Only in recent years, with explosively powerful microprocessors and 3-D graphics chips, as well as the immense popularity of consoles like PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, have game technologies matured enough to begin to approach film-like qualities, said David Perry, president of Shiny Entertainment.
"And we're still in our infancy," he added.
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