starcraft-movie posts

One of the highlights of any game by Blizzard are the cut-scenes, whether created by CGI or via the in-game engine as was the case with the recent sci-fi RTS game StarCraft II. But is Blizzard's parent company Activision Blizzard thinking about making a full-scale feature film using Blizzard's cut scene team that can then be released via online download? Maybe.

According to Gamasutra, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobbby Kotick hinted at such plans during remarks today at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference (say that three times fast). During the talk he speculated that if you took the cut-scenes out of StarCraft II " ... and we were to go to our audiences for whom we have their credit card information as well as a direct relationship and ask, 'Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?', my guess is that ... you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever."

While that last statement about the "biggest opening weekend of any film ever" seems a bit farfetched to us the fact that Activision Blizzard's CEO is thinking about making CGI feature films based on its game franchises and selling them directly via online means is significant. Kotick stated, "Within the next five years, you are likely to see us do that. That may be in partnership with somebody, it may be alone." In fact Kotick claims that the company has done research that indicates "an extremely high percentage" of people who would purchase such a movie online "would then go to the theater then watch it again."

Last week we reported that Valve has been thinking of making a Half-Life movie by themselves after dealing with crappy movie pitches from Hollywood. One developer that likely has the resources and talent to make its own movies is Blizzard. Their CGI unit makes perhaps the best cut scenes of any game developer.

However it looks like Blizzard is looking to Hollywood to make movies based on its game franchisese. It's already teamed up with Legendary Pictures for its long-in-development World of Warcraft movie. But what about another big game franchise, StarCraft? Blizzard VP Rob Pardo told MTV Multiplayer that's its all up to finding the right people who are excited about bring their game properties to movies. He stated, "I think if Jim Cameron came to us tomorrow and said, 'You want to make a 'StarCraft' movie?' we'd probably sign that." We certainly think that the director behind some of the best sci-fi films of all time (The Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss) would be a perfect choice for a movie based on Blizzard's RTS series.