Video game companies move onto Hollywood's turf

Some publishers are making their own films, motivated by a desire to maintain control of their most valuable assets -- and benefit in the event that they hit upon the next big movie franchise.

In the complex tango between movies and video games, Hollywood may be losing its lead.

Motion picture studios have had a penchant for adapting games into movies all the way back to 1993's "Super Mario Bros.," which starred Bob Hoskins as the mustachioed hero Mario and Dennis Hopper as the villainous King Koopa, with varying degrees of success.

But today at the giant Comic-Con International fan convention in San Diego, Microsoft Corp. and French game publisher Ubisoft Entertainment will unveil a series of short films based on their popular games Halo and Assassin's Creed that were made with no Hollywood involvement.

The projects represent the first time that game companies outside Japan have moved onto Hollywood's turf, even while several studios have been creeping on the territory of video games. Warner Bros. recently bought Midway Games Inc. for $49 million, for instance, and Walt Disney Co. has become a major publisher.

Until now, game publishers have always handed over their properties to Hollywood studios, usually considered the experts at converting even the barest of concepts into screen entertainment. Now that's changing.

"This is not something we could have outsourced because it is part of the experience," said Yannis Mallat, the head of Ubisoft's Montreal studio that is making the Assassin's Creed films and an upcoming game sequel. "We are moving to a place where we produce movies and games because all those boundaries are blurring."

The blurring of the lines between the two industries comes at a time when they're directly competing for consumers' entertainment time and dollars. Video game software sales last year totaled $11 billion in the U.S., surpassing all spending on movie tickets.

Despite a recession-fueled slowdown in the business this year, gamers are spending even more time transfixed in front of their consoles, according to a recent study by Nielsen Media Research, drawing them away from television and other forms of media.

Hollywood will not be giving up its grip on many of the biggest video game brands soon, as evidenced by a deal this week for "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi to makean adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment's Warcraft games.

Nor do game companies appear quite ready to assume the huge financial risks behind making big-budget event films that can compete with "Transformers" or "Harry Potter."

But they're moving in that direction, motivated by a desire to maintain control of their most valuable assets -- and benefit in the event that they hit upon the next big movie franchise.

"If you look at how George Lucas held on to 'Star Wars,' not just to make money from action figures but to control the direction the universe went in, you can see why we think it's pretty vital," said Frank O'Connor, creative director for 343 Industries, the Microsoft division that oversees all Halo products. "Luckily, Microsoft has the resources to enable us to do that."

Hollywood, after all, doesn't have a great track record when it comes to turning video games into movies. "Super Mario Bros." was the first of many big-screen flops based on video games, including 1999's "Wing Commander," 2005's "Doom" and this year's "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li." ...

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Some games are so well written, and populated with such distinct characters, I could see why they would want to make their own films.