Lionsgate’s latest move to go beyond movies and TV includes making a “significant investment” in Telltale Games, an episodic games developer and publisher.
The deal will see Lionsgate’s film and brands, including The Hunger Games and Divergent, continue to migrate into the game space as the Vancouver-based mini-studio exploits Telltale’s storytelling approach to gaming.
But the upcoming collaboration will also include a TV-games hybrid for next-generation digital storytelling.
Previously, Telltale has created episodic games for AMC’s The Walking Dead and HBO’s Game of Thrones, and also produced The Wolf Among Us, an episodic interactive video game based on Bill Willingham’s Fables comic book. With Lionsgate’s support, Telltale will produce a TV show as a TV/game hybrid with both scripted and interactive playable elements.
“Their leadership in narrative-driven episodic games, together with our investment and the potential opportunities created by our premium content expertise, will continue to strengthen their ability to offer exciting new avenues of storytelling to their next generation audiences across a broad range of platforms,” Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said Tuesday in a statement.
The tie-up with Telltale follows Lionsgate hiring Peter Levin as Lionsgate president of interactive ventures and games, and the mini-studio making a separate investment in Finnish game developer Next Games.