In yet another game announcement out of left field, VentureBeat reports that a Hollywood production company called
Red Eagle Entertainment is getting into the game business, starting with an MMO based on the
Wheel of Time fantasy novel series created by the late
Robert Jordan.
Red Eagle has the movie, TV and game rights to all 11 novels in the best selling series along with the rights to the upcoming and final Wheel of Time book (currently being written by another author based on notes by Jordan who died in 2007). Games are planned to be tied into releases of movies based on the Wheel of Time novels with VentureBeat reporting that Universal Studios may pony up as much as $150 million to make the first novel,
The Eye of the World. An Wheel of Time MMO is also planned.
This won't be the first time that a game based on the novel series will be released. In 1999 the now defunct
Legend Entertainment released a first person action game based on the Wheel of Time series. Published by GT Interactive (now renamed Infogrames
/Atari) the game got good reviews but was overshadowed by the release of
Quake 3 Arena and
Unreal Tournament at the same timeand did not sell as many copies as anticipated.