Lionsgate Partners with Telltale Games for Videogame-TV Show Hybrid

Separately, each company has created franchises worth millions: Hollywood studio Lionsgate is behind the massively successful Hunger Games and Twilight movies, as well as the hit show Orange Is The New Black. Telltale is the company behind The Walking Dead series of episodic games, which have sold a reported 8.5 million copies, while the studio also has similar titles based on Game Of Thrones and Minecraft in the offing.

Lionsgate has now announced that it's to join forces with Telltale, having bought up a "significant" share of the game studio's business. The aim, according to Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer, is to "accelerate our momentum in the game space." 

"The convergence between premium filmed entertainment brands and original game properties is a natural direction in which to continue diversifying our content business," Feltheimer told Variety, "and Telltale is the perfect partner with whom to explore this dynamic area of growth."

While this means that we could theoretically see episodic games based on The Hunger Games at some point in the future, the partners will first concentrate on making something called a Super Show.

The aim is to create a cross-over between a television series and a videogame, with "one part of interactive playable content with one part of scripted television style content," as Telltale's CEO Kevin Bruner explained to Entertainment Weekly.

Telltale's Super Show series will be a new property, though precise details as to what to expect from it in terms of story are still under wraps.

While cross-overs between TV and games have appeared before - see Syfy and Trion's MMO and TV show venture Defiance, or Microsoft's forthcoming Quantum Break - Telltale's access to Lionhead's resources could make for a very different kind of episodic game. Here, Bruner describes how the pre-recorded and interactive parts of the game intertwine:

"...if you play the interactive episode first, certain elements of the scripted episode portion will be tailored to reflect some choices made in your interactive play through. If you watch the show before playing, some elements in the interactive portions may be presented differently than if you played first. The interactive episodes will never release without a scripted episode, they will always come out together."

Getting the balance right with this is going to be tricky; not only does the storytelling and writing have to be top-notch, but the link between interactive and non-interactive has to feel natural, too. Nevertheless, Bruner remains confident; "Our goal is to create products that have a legitimate chance of winning both a Golden Globe and a Game of the Year," he says.

You can read Bruner's full interview at Entertainment Weekly. More on Telltale and Lionsgate's Super Game as it comes in.