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Peter Jackson Gets His Game On
Call him lord of the gamepad.
Peter Jackson and his longtime companion and fellow Oscar-winning screenwriter Fran Walsh, are joining forces with Microsoft Game Studios to launch their own videogame division, Wingnut Interactive Studio, for which they will create and develop new titles for the Xbox 360 and Xbox Live.
The first offering from the The Lord of the Rings ringmaster will be a joint venture with Bungie Studios to hatch an all-new Halo adventure that will ship in 2008 as follow-up to next year's Halo 3 and timed to coincide with the Halo movie that Jackson is executive producing for 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures.
A second collaboration will team the New Zealand-based Wingnut Interactive with Microsoft Game Studios to develop a completely original videogame property for the next-generation Xbox 360. Details on the game are sketchy.
Jackson, who follows such blockbuster filmmakers as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas into the videogame realm, and Walsh made the announcement at Microsoft's X06 convention in Barcelona this week. They touted themselves as big gaming fans with a keen interest in stretching the boundaries of interactive entertainment.
"From a movie-maker's point of view, it is clear to me that the Xbox 360 platform is the stage where storytellers can work their craft in the same way they do today with movies and books but taking it further with interactivity," Jackson said.
Jackson and Walsh expect to employ the same Oscar-winning special effects wizardry behind LOTR to the new interactive titles.
Microsoft is kicking in an unspecified amount to get Wingnut Interactive off the ground and in return will serve as publisher for all Wingnut's titles.
In related news, Microsoft revealed plans to ship its new, $200 external HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360 in mid-November that will include an HD-DVD version of Jackson's King Kong videogame, which the helmer had a big hand in developing as well. The company also confirmed that its Ensemble Studios division, creator of the critically praised Age of Empire series, is cranking on Halo Wars, which will allow players to control their own human armies as they face off against the deadly Covenant forces.
Jackson will also have the option of turning his upcoming feature films into videogames, most notably Temeraire. The filmmaker recently optioned the rights to the novels that imagines dragons taking part in the Napoleonic Wars. Another film project with videogame potential is the Jackson-produced effects-heavy remake of the World War II aerial battle drama Dambusters, which is targeted for release in 2008. Aside from Jackson's own projects, his WETA Digital has also been tapped to create the effects and title character for Fox's Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, due out in 2007.
Nonetheless, Jackson's next directorial effort won't be easily translatable to Xbox fans--an adaptation of Alice Sebold's ghost story, The Lovely Bones.
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