Majesco also was approached by comicbook publisher Echo 3 Worldwide, a new company specializing in videogame-based comics. It is publishing BloodRayne as the first property under its Digital Webbing imprint, with four issues scheduled for 2005.

Majesco redesigned BloodRayne as it was being developed so it would have broader, mass-media potential. “You need to design characters you not only want to play as but learn more about,” Buckley says. “[BloodRayne is] an interesting mix of sexy and dangerous and formidable. There has to be enough character appeal to extend into these other media.”

Buckley adds that both men and women find the star of BloodRayne attractive, and that makes her more appealing to Hollywood. Like many videogame characters, the property features lots of blood and gore and is not for consumers under 17.

Spy Hunter, a classic franchise that started in the ‘80s, will be a feature release next summer starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. © 2004 Midway Home Ent. Inc. All rights reserved.

Atari is another company looking into creating multimedia franchises. It announced in March 2005 that it had entered into a multiyear, exclusive agreement with Spark Unlimited, best known for creating the videogame Call of Duty: Finest Hour, to develop properties for all media. The partners expect their first joint game to release during the 2006 holiday season and they hope to exploit it in film, television and consumer products.

Even as they look to extend their brands, videogame companies don’t want to lose sight of their core competency. “We’re in the game business,” says Brennan of Midway, whose Spy Hunter, a classic franchise going back to the arcade days of the 1980s, will be released by Universal Studios in summer 2006 as a film starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. “[Film revenues] are ancillary revenues for us.”

Yet Brennan points out that Midway, like other videogame companies, wants to take advantage of opportunities when they come up. “We’re in the game business, but as a videogame company we’re also an entertainment company.” Midway was one of the first videogame publishers to extend one of its properties into films, authorizing two Mortal Kombat movies in the mid-1990s; there is also a line of Mortal Kombat comicbooks.

Brennan explains the convergence of online entertainment, downloading, DVDs, films, TV and games logically has led to more crossover among these media. “It’s the same consumer,” he says. “People want it that way.”

Death Jr. is taking a different path to the big screen. It makes its debut as a PSP game later this year, then it will appear as a comicbook and an anime-style TV series while it is developed as a feature film. © 2005 Backbone Ent.

Backbone Entertainment’s Death, Jr., which is debuting with a Konami-published game for the PSP later this year, is being released as a comicbook, developed for a film by Backbone’s management company, Circle of Confusion, and being translated to an anime-style TV series by Madhouse Studios. The film has a director (Lawrence Guterman of Cats & Dogs and Son of the Mask fame), a producer (Orange Grove Entertainment) and a first draft of the script.

Backbone has retained all the rights to Death, Jr. In contrast to many other properties, which have built a proven sales record before moving into other media, the company has attracted interest in the property from Hollywood even before the first game has been published.

To create the best game possible, Backbone felt it needed to create a backstory and an entire world, so it hired a writer to develop a comicbook to use as a promotional and focus-grouping tool. “We used [the comic] as proof of content,” explains Chris Charla, senior producer at Backbone. “Can the content work in a comicbook?”

The comic ended up being a popular give-away at Comic-Con, and generated interest from Hollywood, including the management company and Image Comics, which will produce a color version of the Death Jr. comicbook series. “One thing led to another,” says Mike Mika, Backbone’s creative director. “We’re learning the process as we go along.”