Red Faction is set to get the movie treatment as part of THQ’s new strategy to develop “the most robust trans-media plays anybody’s ever seen in the games business.”
The videogame movie business hasn’t exactly been a big winner for anyone, but that’s not discouraging THQ from taking its shot. THQ Vice President Danny Bilson sounded particularly enthusiastic when he spoke with CVG last week about “some really interesting stuff” coming in the near future for Red Faction, including a trip to the big screen.
“What you’re going to see from us in how we’re going to see original IP is going to be different. We’re going to be doing the most robust trans-media plays anybody’s ever seen in the games business,” he said. “Other companies are, ‘Oh, we just license this IP to this studio’ and you never see anything, or at the most you see some bad Mario Bros. movie. Nobody has ever made it work.”
“My game is going to get made either way but what I do is I’m giving these movie guys the opportunity to meet me two or three years at the end with a triple-A, awesome game and a triple-A, awesome movie that compliment each other – and certainly don’t repeat each other – and start to build a world and a fiction and all of that,” he continued. “You’re going to see some announcements from us soon that are very robust in that area and it’s nothing like you’ve seen before.”
I might be a bit unclear as to what exactly “trans-media” means but if it means what I think it means, Bilson’s excitement strikes me as a bit unexpected: In June 2009, he revealed that THQ was giving up on core game development for the Nintendo Wii because, he said, “We’re a little risk averse.” One of the THQ releases that prompted that aversion? Deadly Creatures, the scorpion-and-spider game starring the voices of Hollywood actors Dennis Hopper and Billy Bob Thornton.
Red Faction 4 is currently in development and is expected to be released later this year.
