Activision Blizzard has hired Stacey Sher to co-lead its recently formed movie division. This shows how seriously Activision is taking its stride to make it big in Hollywood.
With more than 20 years of experience working on movies and television shows, Sher has worked with directors like Quentin Tarantino, Oliver Stone and Steven Soderbergh, having her name in credits list of films which include recently released The Hateful Eight, Django Unchained, Erin Brockovich, Out of Sight and Pulp Fiction along with a few television shows.
Hiring was announced by Activision Blizzard chief executive Bobby Kotick, who along with Nick van Dyk, a former executive from Disney and now a co-president at the studios will look at making Activision Blizzard a major movie production with its game based movies.
For starters, the studio has already developed an animated series based on its game Skylander titled Skylander Academy. The animated series has voice cast from actors like Justin Long, Ashley Tisdale, Jonathan Banks and Norm Macdonald and is likely to air this year.
With the hiring of Sher and van Dyk, the company looks to turn its hugely-popular Call of Duty games into a movie franchise just like Marvel’s universe and also maybe tap into its other IPs to create content for TV and movies. It has popular games like Diablo, Starcraft, Doom and Quake among many others under its wings.
“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. 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,” Sher said in a statement.
Activision Blizzard had previously licensed popular MMORPG game World of Warcraft to Legendary Pictures for a single movie but is not involved in the production process. The movie is set to release on 10 June.
The company recently bought Candy Crush maker King Digital for a sum of $5.9 billion acquisition and the IPs from King too could be part of Activision’s part to expand into movie business just like Rovio did it with The Angry Birds Movie.
