MCGEE SPEAKS ON ALICE
Straight from the mouth of American McGee in an interview he conducted with IGN, the Alice movie has found a new owner and WILL be going forward as planned, thank you Fox! Also stated in the interview are small details in regards to the plans for the Oz movie (a trilogy done by Jerry Bruckheimer!) and the American McGee’s Grimm game and movie option. Read on for more…
Here are a few of the important parts:
‘On a day-to-day basis I’ve continued to do game design. We have Oz up and going as a film with Jerry Bruckheimer, toys on the shelves that are selling very well, a book deal with Warner Books, a game that we’re in the process of finding a publisher for, and a bunch of other projects where we’re either building a license or we’ve got film, toy and book stuff in development…’
‘..Oz was originally picked up as a game title by Infogrames before they became Atari. During the period where they were about to declare bankruptcy and be de-listed, they dropped Oz with five or six other Xbox exclusive titles. We intended to go out and find a new publisher for the title and we discovered that game publishers in that top tier just aren’t picking up original titles any more. It got to the point where we could tell it was futile to continue trying. We eventually stopped and went and sold the film rights to Bruckheimer and Disney and at this point we’ve decided that, in general, it’s not worth our time to go and float an original idea to top tier game publishers…’
..’The other way we’re going about it, and this applies to Oz and Grimm is, as you said, to go work those ideas in other industries. Oz has a toy deal and the toys are selling very well. The book deal with Warner Books, the films with Bruckheimer — as those ancillaries gain momentum we get to a point where, since we still own them, we can go to game publishers and say here’s the next big thing. It’s the same thing we’re doing with Grimm. We’ve got a toy deal in the works, a book deal in the works, I’m putting the finishing touches on the film script. We’re gonna go sell the film. Every time we do one of these properties, we escalate our creative involvement in the ancillary markets. With Oz and Alice I just sold the idea; with Grimm I’m actually writing the script…’
‘..The Alice film is being moved to Fox. For a long time it was tied up at Dimension. Fortunately Fox bought the rights outright and set it up with a great group of producers there. The last we heard, everything’s moving forward. I’m not that involved in that; it was the first thing I ever sold.
We just announced the Bruckheimer/Disney deal for Oz last January. They’re talking about making three films, a trilogy of live-action, big budget craziness. Grimm as a film, we’re putting the finishing touches on the screenplay. For the game we’re working on with Trevor, we’re also going to do a film pitch. It’s something we’re always looking to get into. One of the reasons why is that I want to get to a point where we’re doing simultaneous production of the game and film inside of one studio. One of these days someone’s going to figure out how to marry what Pixar does with what somebody like Blizzard does and they’re going to change the whole model. We want to get out in front of that as much as possible.’
Courtesy of Bloody Disgusting
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