‘Call Of Duty’ And ‘Warcraft’ Publisher Activision Blizzard Has Started A TV And Movie Studio

Activision Blizzard is the undisputed top dog in the realm of video publishing, but the company has been surprisingly shy about branching out into other forms of entertainment. There’s never been a Call of Duty movie or Skylanders TV show, despite these being the most profitable media franchises in the world. According to a New York Times profile of Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, the company has shot down numerous attempts to turn their games into movies.

“Call of Duty may look like a movie, but Mr. Kotick has little interest in turning it into one, and has turned down several studios’ requests. He says movies based on video games rarely please devoted fans and could possibly taint the brand.”

Well, it seems like Activision Blizzard’s position on movies and TV has changed. They’ve already partnered with Legendary Pictures for the upcoming Warcraft movie, and now they’ve pulled a Marvel and announced they’ll be producing future movie and TV adaptations in-house through their own studio.

“Activision Blizzard Studios has the unique advantage of starting with a library of world-class intellectual property that includes some of the largest franchises which have not yet been developed in film and television. Our library spans more than 30 years of global entertainment culture and, in the last 12 months alone, fans of Activision Blizzard properties have played and watched our games online for more than 13 billion hours.”

The first project being produced by Activision Blizzard Studios is Skylanders Academy, a TV cartoon based on the ultra-popular toys-to-life series. They’re also planning to do a series of films based on Call of Duty, because of course they are.

It will certainly be interesting to see if Activision Blizzard can kick ass in the movie and TV spheres like they have with video games. I’m not sure I’m that excited for a Call of Duty movie, but hopefully Activision Blizzard taking the Marvel approach will finally result in video games movies and TV series that aren’t totally embarrassing. Or, at least, are more true to their sometimes embarrassing source material.

via The Verge

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