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II. Reading (8 points)

Hollywood learns to play the video gamę

FT Correspondent

Sean Connery is revisiting his 1963 performance as James Bond in Frani Russia With Love. Al Pacino is lending his likeness to a new take on his 1983 film Scarface. And Clint Eastwood is rerecording dialogue from his 1971 film Dirty Harry.

These actors are not working on remakes of the original films but on video games extensions of the film franchises. For studios, the games are a lucrative opportunity to introduce products from the back catalogue to a new generation.

Vidco gamę software generated S7.3bn (£3.9bn) in revenue in 2004, and sales rosę 23 per cent in the first quarter of this year. Film classics gathering dust in studio libraries are ripe for reinvention, industry observers say. The Jaws Unleashed video gamę, based on the famous shark ftanchise, will be launched shortly after the original film’s rerelease on DVD.

Hollywood’s love affair with video games dates back to the early 1980s, when studios licensed products based on hit films such as ET. and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Relying on a filnfs reputation to generate sales, the gamę publishers of

the day thought they could get away with minimal effort and short development periods for film-based games. They were wrong. Unlike today’s games, which take as long as three years to develop, these early film-themed games were typically created in a few months on spartan budgets. Consumers rejected these lacklustre offerings, which compared poorly to sophisticated independent titles such as Super Mario Brothers. It was rumoured that thousands of unsold copies of the E.T. gamę were eventually buried in a New Mexico landfill.

'Games [hased] on movies had a bad reputation,' says Andy McNamara, editor-in-chief of Videogame Informer. 'Hollywood treated them like lunch boxes, another licensed product to support a film. 'Even five years ago, the studios didn’t know how to deal with the video gamę industry, but now there are vice-presidents of video games, staffs developing various brands, far morę quality control. Games based on Lord of the Rings - superior to the big-screen versions - helped tum things around.'

To bolster the calibre of its offerings, Warner Bros last year instituted a quality standard 20veming its dealin2S with gamę

developers. An independent third party assesses the qualitv of each video gamę. If a gamę is deemed lacking, the developer must pay the studio higher royalties.

According to Beth Goss, of Universal, 'Extending the franchise through a video gamę is morę logical than making another movie.' It is certainly cheaper. The average video gamę costs between S8m and S 12m to produce - considerably less than its big-screen counterpart. In the autumn, Electronic Arts, the leading independent interactive software company, will launch James Bond 007: From Russia With Love. Written by Bruce Fierstein, who has screen-writing credits on three Bond films, the gamę serves up new gadgets, plot twists and characters.

'Consumers want video games to bring them the untold story - how did the horse’s head get in the bed in The Godfather?' says Jillian Goldberg, vice-president of product marketing for Electronic Arts. 'In the end, though, the success of the movie is crucial to the success of the gamę.'

From the Financial Times