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Movie and videogame audiences are "merging" - Grin

Film business increasingly drawn into game space and could take advantage of digital distribution, says studio co-founder

Ulf Andersson, co-founder of Grin, has said that audiences for movies and videogames are "merging", and because of this the film business is taking adaptations "more seriously".

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Andersson spoke of his studio's experience on both the Wanted and Terminator franchises, and working with Warner Brothers.

"They've had to change their culture to be able to produce games," he explained. "Movie productions are pretty secretive about their stuff, so depending on how the production looks that can of course impact on development a lot."

"I think the movie business is taking games more seriously," he added. "I know that there are movies planned where the game is planned into it - the audiences are starting to join together. Who is going to see the movie and who is going to buy the game has begun to meld together. "

He went on to say that more and more movie companies would enter the game space in a bid to control their IP and reap the benefits of the growing videogames revenue.

"Of course they're going to move into games because it's a revenue stream and they're the IP holders anyway, so why give away free money if they can do it themselves" Andersson explained.

"The tricky thing is the downloadable trend that's happening and how that will affect publishers in general, of course that's a different topic," he said, continuing: "That might affect who is interested and who can step up and compete in this business. If you look at the really, really big publishers they might get in trouble… if everything goes live or downloadable what do you do with all your employees?

"Maybe the older companies, the movie companies, can have a good chance in the future because they don't have all that baggage to carry and while moving into the market actually be younger and more experimental in the online division because they don't have an established pipeline already in that area. Or they could just be boring and do the same thing."

Ulf Andersson's full interview with GamesIndustry.biz is now avaliable here.