Next Gen Game

Publishing exec Danny Bilson talks cross-media efforts, teases original IP game and movie in conjunction with major filmmaker.

THQ is a big game tie-in plans for the future and, accordingly, sufficient, since 22 th century sci-fi shooter series Red Faction. Published in conjunction with NBC Universal-owned cable channel SyFy produce two-hour movie pilot called Red Faction: OriginsWho will get on the air around the time Red Faction: Armageddon starts March.

Sources Red Faction will debut as a two-hour TV movie next March but could become much more.

Danny Bilson, executive vice president of THQ 's core gaming business, showed the first publisher' s the last trans-media plans, investor 's conference at Electronic Entertainment Expo , but recently discussed them in greater detail with GameSpot.

Bilson outlined several key aspects of its various gaming tie-ins, including Red Faction Origins

While Saints Row worked best as a film (it's a little too R-rated for most TV networks, Bilson said), Red Faction Origins made perfect sense as a TV movie for SyFy.

"The thing with SyFy is they wanted to get in business with us on multiple things. We thought about what would be good for SyFy, and Red Faction felt like a no-brainer for a couple reasons," Bilson said. "One is that it's producible on a television budget. It takes place on a terraformed Mars where people can breathe and a lot of it is natural terrain with vehicles and spaceships and different factions."

Depending on how well Red Faction OriginsIt turns out and performs, it can be expanded to a full TV season episodes of a-la Battlestar Galactica . Bilson said the movie will tell a self-contained story, but one that is designed to push the fiction into a regular episodic format.

"All of these pieces are really to support the games," Bilson said. "They're not big revenue drivers or anything like that. It's really about how we can make the universe cool, give fans more access points to a game they enjoy, and how we can make a game more important when it comes out."

One thing that Bilson said separates THQ's efforts from those of its competitors is that announced projects will come to fruition much more consistently. Instead of licensing out its intellectual property or letting other people take it through the film development process, the publisher makes partnership deals with "guarantees to picture." As a result, THQ films should avoid the development purgatory that has claimed game-to-film adaptations like the Halo movie.

Despite that insistence on releasing finished products, Bilson said the company is mindful about the damage done by substandard tie-ins.

"One thing about trans-media is you can't have a bad piece because it ruins the whole thing," Bilson said, adding, "With these partnerships, if it's not good, we can stop it."

While THQ will continue pushing its existing intellectual properties into new media where it makes sense, Bilson said the publisher is also taking another approach to the idea. He said the company is working on a partnership with a "major filmmaker" that will see a game and film project for a new intellectual property developed jointly from the ground up, though specific details aren't yet ready to be announced.

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