Activision hires Oscar nominee to co-run its movie studio

Stacey Sher is the producer behind movies like Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained and Erin Brockovich

I have to admit that when Activision announced last year that it was creating it's own movie and TV production company, my hopes for what it would create were not exactly high. Video game movies have, pretty much without exception, always been terrible, and why would that change now?

Maybe I was wrong, though, since Activision Blizzard  has gone and found some pretty impressive people to run the new studio, revealing on Wednesday that it has hired Academy Award-nominated producer Stacey Sher as co-president.

Sher has a pretty impressive resume, having worked on a slew of really good films, and has worked with some really talented directors, including Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderberg, Barry Sonnenfeld, Oliver Stone and Terry Gilliam. Her credits include Pulp Fiction, The Hateful Eight, Contagion, Out of Sight, Garden State, World Trade Center, Reality Bites, Gert Shorty, Gattaca and Man on the Moon.

She was nominated for two Oscars for producing Django Unchained and Erin Brockovich. So, yeah, pretty impressive stuff.

She is going to be working along side former Disney executive Nick van Dyk, who spent nine years at Disney where, as Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, he helped drive Disney's focus on franchise intellectual property and played a significant role in the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. Prior to that, van Dyk was part of Artisan Entertainment's senior management team.

“As its large and loyal fan base can attest, Activision Blizzard has created franchises that mean so much to audiences over the course of 35 years,” Sher said in a statement.

“I’m excited about our mandate to create filmed entertainment based on Activision Blizzard games that is as great as the games themselves. I look forward to joining Nick, Bobby, and the insanely talented and forward-thinking team at Activision Blizzard to develop an even greater voice for these franchises by bringing them into the world of television and film.”

Activision isn't the first gaming studio to take steps toward now outlets for its content. Angry Bird studio Rovio did it first, creating a studio dedicated to making a movie of its most famous property. Set for release in May, it will feature the voices of people like Blake Shelton, Jason Sudeikis, Maya Rudolph, Bill Hader
and Peter Dinklage.

This is an interesting avenue for these companies to go down, but it's not unprecedented. There are a lot of parallels between what Activision and Rovio are currently doing and what Marvel Studios started to do in the late 00s. That means that they, like Marvel, will have complete control over their own content and vision, and are responsible for how it is presented on screen. 

It represents a potential shift in the gaming industry toward a larger multimedia focus. There are more outlets for content creation than ever before, and gaming companies are now finally starting to take advantage of that. 

Activision Blizzard is the company behind such behemoths as Call of Duty, Diabo and Starcraft, and it has plans for all of those franchises to eventually hit the big screen. Call of Duty will lead the pack, and the studio has plans for a series of feature films, as well as the possibility of television adaptations. Again, Marvel, with its feature films, and its tie-in shows like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Agent Carter, comes to mind.

Before that happens, though, Activision already has its first production ready to go: it's an animated television series called Skylanders, which will be based on the video game of the same name. It's going to feature the voice of justin Long, Ashley Tisdale, Jonathan Banks and Norm Macdonald. There's no date given for when the show will premiere.

If Activision is successful with these projects, I would not be surprised if a number of other game studios immediately follow suit with their own studios. A major shift for gaming could be coming very soon.

(Image source: variety.com)