Hollywood Doesn’t Get Games, Avatar Producer Says

By Gus Mastrapa

LOS ANGELES — Avatar producer Jon Landau says getting game developers to work directly with forward-thinking filmmakers is the solution to Hollywood’s long-standing videogame problem.

The process for developing movie-themed games “can’t be studio-driven,” Landau told Wired.com. “It has to be filmmaker-driven. I think [game companies] need to go find the Jim Camerons, Steven Spielbergs and Peter Jacksons of the world and develop the relationships with them.”

Landau’s comments came after his keynote interview at the 3D Gaming Summit here Thursday, the same day Avatar was released on Blu-ray and DVD. During the keynote, Landau detailed the ways that his filmmaking team helped Ubisoft make the stereoscopic 3-D Avatar videogame — and blamed 20th Century Fox for several missteps that may have hurt the game.

Fox didn’t quite understand Ubisoft’s needs when it came to marketing and making the game, Landau said. A reluctance to allow Ubisoft to release an early trailer, for instance, made it harder for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game to find its audience.

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