Telltale Working On Adaptations Of Fables, Walking Dead Graphic Novels

Episodic adventure game specialists Telltale Games have announced new projects based on Fables and The Walking Dead graphic novels, to be published by Warner Bros. Interactive. Telltale senior VP for marketing Steve Allison revealed the new projects in an interview with the Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital blog, also detailing the company's digital download-centric strategy. Allison revealed that it only takes about 100,000 sales to reach profitability on any one episodic title, and that their current games average roughly double that sales rate. This has helped the company increase revenues 90 percent to over $10 million in 2010 and has it targeting the addition of 50 new employees in 2011, for 140 total. But the company is setting its sights even higher, aiming for single title sales of one million downloads in the future. Allison says The Walking Dead, specifically, could become a $20 to $30 million franchise for the company if its successful. The Walking Dead started as an Image-published graphic novel penned by Robert Kirkman in 2003. AMC recently adapted the story of a small band of survivors in a zombie wasteland into a critically acclaimed TV show. Telltale had been rumored to be working on a game based on the license since sending a press event invite which referenced a title "based on a just-launched property from the TV and comic book world whose popularity is changing life as some know it." Bill Willingham's Vertigo-published Fables graphic novel is more obscure but has developed a devoted following since its 2002 premiere. The ongoing series follows the lives of a number of familiar fairy tale characters who have been exiled from their magical homeworlds into a secretive New York City neighborhood.