Capcom Eyes Hollywood For Future Franchises

Following news of its forthcoming Street Fighter movie adaptation, a new report says publisher Capcom is increasingly looking to Hollywood for a number of its major properties, as well as to find new IP to license. According to a new report in film industry trade site Hollywood Reporter, the late October announcement of a Street Fighter adaptation, produced in conjunction with Hyde Park Entertainment and rumored to focus primarily on Chun-Li, is just the beginning of a new strategy at Capcom to work more closely with Hollywood in the future. The report references the recent announcement that Capcom has hired former THQ exec Germaine Gioia, credited with turning the studio into an industry heavyweight with strategic partnerships with Nickelodeon, Pixar, and 20th Century Fox licenses, as its newly created vice president of licensing. With the popular existing film license Resident Evil already under its belt, and rights to Onimusha and Devil May Cry adaptations already purchased, Gioia says Capcom is seeking to expand its licensing operations beyond simply the mature market. She also will be responsible for seeking original Hollywood properties for Capcom to create games around. Capcom will also be working with producers to strategically time new Capcom film releases with new iterations of franchise games in hopes of driving sales of both, as well as using ticket-sales to help offset rising game production costs. Gioia told the Hollywood Reporter, "For the near-term, I'm going to look at the game engines that Capcom has and the capabilities internally at the studios and presumably see if there are things we can take advantage of with properties that might do well with recognizable characters or story lines associated with existing game engines." She added, "That always doesn't work, so it might be a while before certain licensed properties that have been developed from the ground up are out in the marketplace."