Lionsgate and Telltale Games have announced today a partnership between the two companies following an investment into Telltale. As part of its investment, Lionsgate Chief Executive Officer Jon Feltheimer will also join the Telltale Board of Directors.
The investment will continue the extension of Lionsgate’s film and television brands into the game space and will bring Lionsgate’s expertise in creating and marketing premium content to Telltale’s unique narrative-driven, storytelling approach to gaming. The collaboration will also enable the two companies to explore opportunities to co-develop existing and original IP into episodic games and television.
Telltale has a massive backlog of narrative-driven episodic games, with some of the more popular based on existing IPs. The Walking Dead, based on comics of the same name, has sold 8.5 million copies and topped sales charts on Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam, and is joined by Game of Thrones, based on the smash television series, The Wolf Among Us, the episodic interactive graphic adventure video game based on Bill Willingham’s Fablescomic book, and Tales from the Borderlands, Telltale’s adaptation of the acclaimed PC, Mac and console video game title from Gearbox Software and 2K Games.
“Telltale is one of the premier storytellers in the gaming world today,” said Lionsgate Chief Executive Officer Jon Feltheimer. “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 is one of the most innovative, entrepreneurial and impressive content companies in the world today. I’m delighted to welcome an experienced executive like Jon, a leader who shares our unique vision, to our Board,” said Telltale CEO Kevin Bruner. “Lionsgate has a great track record in developing and marketing feature films as well as platform-defining premium scripted television. This partnership will accelerate Telltale’s ability to create not only original games, but episodic television series based on our game properties – an area at the cutting edge of industry growth.”
“Our partnership with Kevin Bruner and his team at Telltale continues to accelerate our momentum in the game space,” said Lionsgate President of Interactive Ventures & Games Peter Levin. “The convergence between premium filmed entertainment brands and original game properties is a natural direction in which to continue diversifying our content business, and Telltale is the perfect partner with whom to explore this dynamic area of growth.”
This partnership opens up a myriad of possible Telltale games to be explored, thanking to the variety of Lionsgate IPs. No new game has been announced as part of this deal, with Telltale busy with many titles already, but you can expect this is the first of many announcements we’ll hear from this exciting new partnership.