EA contracts UTA

Publisher signs with Hollywood talent agency to expand presence in film and television space.

The gaming and film industries have been close collaborators for quite some time, but recently the line separating the two industries has begun to blur. Shortly before last week's E3 Media & Business Summit, France-based gamemaker Ubisoft purchased 300 digital effects house Hybride Technologies in an effort to augment its own filmmaking ambitions and aid in the migration of Tom Clancy-inspired war games to celluloid.

Now, one more player in the gaming industry is getting an agent--in a very literal way. Electronic Arts announced today that it has signed with United Talent Agency for representation in the film and television space. EA did not indicate any particular title slated to make the transition to the silver screen, but did call out a number of its original franchises, including Army of Two, Need for Speed, Dead Space, and Mirror's Edge.

"UTA is an ideal partner for us to bring the richness and story telling nuance of our popular games into other forms of media that give consumers more ways to experience these creative concepts," said vice president of EA Entertainment Patrick O'Brien. "Some of our teams have already made steps to expand our games into other forms of media like online, social networks and print publication. This partnership will help us take these efforts to the next level and match each of our titles with the right artists, producers and financiers."

EA isn't an entirely new entrant into the film medium. In 2007, 20th Century Fox picked up the rights to make a film based on the publisher's massively popular Sims franchise. While details on The Sims are sparse, it will reportedly be a live-action film, produced by John Davis (Predator, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties) and written by Brian Lynch (who is also working on the Shrek spin-off, Puss in Boots). EA also revealed earlier this year that it would be partnering with Starz's internal studio Film Roman on an animated, straight-to-DVD adaptation of its forthcoming Dead Space survival horror action game.

39 Comments

  • raichudl

    Posted Aug 13, 2008 1:49 pm GMT

    Seems that a Spore movie is in the works.

  • ps3thabest

    Posted Jul 25, 2008 7:14 am GMT

    @SkullXero o guess wat this is the same ea who is making a sims movie u kno ea who made wack skate and crap madden the ea u like

  • zfiftyfives

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 11:15 pm GMT

    jeez give ea a break they are trying to keep up with ubi

  • SkullXero

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 5:58 pm GMT

    More typical EA haters commenting. GO figure. Did not even both to read more than 2 comments =P

  • NA3D

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 3:14 pm GMT

    Re-Devil, we are talking about the company, not the people who work there. I know a dozen ex-EA employees that went to various other companies. They hated working for EA because of how they treat their employees, and this is after the lawsuit against them for not paying overtime and such.

    EA hires people straight out of college for low pay to make games of low quality as fast as possible, then if they dont quit after that project, then they go to another project and are told to get it done fast as possible. Quality is rarely if ever what the focus is on. Out of the EA games since 1999 that have been 8.0 rating or higher, only 10-20 of those games were developed by EA and not an outside studio or 'partner'. Partners are what EA uses, and makes little profit off of to try to boost their PR and Image due to their many horrible games.

    EA works their employees to the bone, and sometimes 'makes a mistake' and doesnt pay them the overtime. They get small studios outside of EA to develop games like SimSocieties for next to nothing, just so EA can milk the franchise to the bone.

    EA always says they are going to do a hands off approach, then 2-4 years down the line they do hands on when people are paying less attention, then that studio/company no longer exists and has merged into EA while half of those people get fired or leave, never willing to work for EA again.

    The employees, such as programmers, artists, and other lower level employees are great people. Some designers aren't, a few are great people. The EXECUTIVE members are the evil that drive the company and why so many people hate EA.

    What they are going to do to Take2 is exactly what they did to Maxis, but without a Will Wright in the mix. They will let them develop games close to normal for the first wave they let out, the second wave they will put 25% or so of their own employees into the mix, during the third wave they will merge that studio with their HQ or group the studio in some other form where they will mix up who is where, while laying off employees, at the forth wave there are hardly any original employees if any, during the 5th wave that company will no longer exist, and around the 6th wave they will milk the branding and franchise dry to the bone until it is worth nothing.

    This normally works a lot faster and the waves mix together more, but it pretty much shows you what happens.

    EA milks these companies dry, and if employees are not fired, they get the heck out as fast as they can. With the game SimAnimals, it shows how dry they try to milk everything. They dont stop until the branding loses its value in attracting attention, then they do it again to another company.

    Who wants to tell the story of BullFrog or any other companys?

    I'm done posting in here though, I said over my 2 cents and I am sure people are sick of listening to me. I'm going to leave GS for a month or so actually other than union and other events i am a part of.

    Peace out, sorry for those that dont agree, just ignore me.

  • enoslives7

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 1:07 pm GMT

    say it aint so......a craptacular movie about the sims ?? Make room in the bargain bins . EA is disaster. BOTCOTT EA !!!!

  • Ra-Devil

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 12:04 pm GMT

    Why do people hate EA so passionately? I don't get it. I mean, in all honesty, they're not a bad company, they work themselves to the bone, and they're good to their stockholders. And if you don't believe the working part, go find an article that was printed about what kind of hours they work. They work up to 16 to 18 hours a day, from 6 to 7 days a week, and they're paid like any other game programmer.

    Their only problem is that gamers in today's world are FAR too fanatic, FAR to unforgiving, and FAR too... idiotic? Come on, they aren't the devil itself, they're just a powerful company that want to be near the top. Every industry needs a company like that if it ever wants to become mainstream or well known, it's just a new fad to hate on EA.

    "Oh no, they're going to buy T2 with their new hands-off approach, what will we ever do! Are games will be destroyed!"..... no, they really won't. Hell, with extra financial support, I doubt the games would go down in quality. They might stay the same, but you can't get any worse than GTA IV, which was probably the lowest point in the series (I know it sold well, but that doesn't change the fact that it was even more shallow than GTA III).

    Since I'm mostly preaching to self-ignorant teenagers and young adults, it's hard to help you understand this and pull you out of the mob-mentality. So, as a gaming fan who started with Mario and Megaman in 1989, please stop. Stop the political BS. Stop the hating. There's no point to it. You can't control the quality of a game, and you can't change the minds of gamers who love that game. Along with that, you can't stop a company from doing what thriving copanies do; expand. If you think that your opinion of EA really matters, or that hating EA is the right thing for the gaming world, you are pretty far gone. Just play your games. Enjoy your games. Have fun with others. Praise games that deserve praise, but don't try to utterly destroy games you only sort-of disliked. Point out the good, the bad, and the ugly of everything and everyone, including yourself. Consoles are great, all of them are great. The community that backs gaming is huge, fanatic, and amazingly devoted, but this is also why we're divided, and why we try to hurt other gamers.

    On what seems to be a side-note, hope EA knows what it's doing with its IPs, and turning them into televion shows and movies.

  • TheHumanDove

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 12:00 pm GMT

    WHY? WHY A SIMS MOVIE?

    How does that even make sense? I guess any movie in the entire world could be titled 'The Sims' then, because it's a life simulator....

  • VolcanoMan001

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 11:32 am GMT

    Yay! Madden 2010 and NCAA 2010 the movie! You heard it here first, because EA isn't quite making enough billions off selling us those crappy hardly-changed-every-year games already.

  • Siz2005

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 9:52 am GMT

    I hope when Timesplitters 4 comes out, it not published by EA like Future Perfect was. TS Future Perfect was a great but im trying to avoid buying games that has an EA Logo, cus the last game that owned that had a EA logo was Timesplitters Future Perfect.

  • VenomRitual

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 8:51 am GMT

    "a film based on the publisher's massively popular Sims franchise. "
    a movie about people living their lives? lol ok sounds good.

    oo EA. first activision and Blizzard merge and now you want take-two. then ubisoft buys a digital effects stuidio and now you want your hand in movies. hate EA news

  • ps3thabest

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 7:50 am GMT

    o great hear goes ea again with dis crap

  • NA3D

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 7:35 am GMT

    GAMERALL - this is what I see every time I read that part

    "UTA is the ideal partner for us to bring richness to ourselves."

  • GAMERALL

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 7:22 am GMT

    "UTA is an ideal partner for us to bring the richness and story telling nuance of our popular games into other forms of media that give consumers more ways to experience these creative concepts,"

    Arrogance.

  • hama666

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 6:29 am GMT

    EA Games - challenge everything, take over everything, destroy franchises and inject mediocrity into the gaming market.

    Now theyre moving into the Film industry - Lord help us all.

  • HavenlyHunter

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 6:24 am GMT

    The only good film that they can make is Command & Conquer

  • NA3D

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 6:13 am GMT

    tycoon - They dont, but consumers should be fully aware of this and keep away from shady businesses. Though in the internet age it is harder than ever to hide your secrets, but how is that bad when it comes to the corporate world? So I hold EA to a standard, just like I hold every person in this country to a standard, and if those people do not live up to that standard, then I dont deal with them. Who wants to deal with a person that steals, takes advantage of people, is two faced (greed/acts like they are an angel), treats their own family like trash when they gave everything for that person to be successful, exile family members who got you through the roughest times, and uses people to get ahead?

    I really hope that Ubi and Take2 are secretly planning to merge...

    I dont remember where I frist read it, but Sims is going to be a movie, and MySims is going to be a TV series, haha. Wow... yeah... so sad... EA is going to kill the Sim branding name. Here is a link to a place where part of the story is...

    http://sanjose.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2008/07/21/daily51.html?ana=yfcpc

    Sorry I don't remember the source I read it from, it had a lot more details than San Jose and GameSpot though. Maybe GameSpot could research it, and make an addition to this article. I am sure 5 interns could find it pretty fast.

    This really is EA showing their true colors though.

  • Epic_Oatmeal

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 5:21 am GMT

    "UTA is an ideal partner for us to bring the richness and story telling nuance of our popular games into other forms of media that give consumers more ways to experience these creative concepts..."

    All I hear is, "Unsuspecting movie goers are the perfect targets for us to cash in on our half-baked and over-hyped franchise names that we gave up on making quality games for a long time ago." Now, I'm not really an EA hater or anything, but that doesn't mean I haven't been very disappointed with them in the last few years. Trying to buy the competition and shoveling out games on a yearly basis is business, even if it is shameful, but turning their franchise names into movies? Here's what I imagine:

    Sims - Real life with people who talk in gibberish and have green diamonds over their heads...

    NFL - Why watch a real football game on the television when you can spend more money to watch a fake on in the theaters every year?

    Army of Two - Lame story or not, I guess this could make a decent action movie.

    Need for Speed - It's street racing... WITH MORE SPEED!!!

    Dead Space - Easily the best choice for a movie, but I don't have too high hopes for it if it's a direct-to-DVD production.

    As we all know, EA's titles aren't exactly perfect movie material, but then what game-to-movie adaptations haven't been like that? It's either a bad choice of game (Uwe Boll), or an incompetent director (also Uwe Boll). To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised one bit if EA let Uwe Boll make movies out of their games, but hopefully they have enough humanity left in them to do otherwise.

  • catsimboy

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 5:10 am GMT

    I'd rather have EA contract herpes.

  • Kratos_Cruxis

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 4:08 am GMT

    "bring the richness and story telling nuance of our popular games".... just lol. I understand he's paid to make EA sound good but come on!! Does the man have no conscience!!!

  • masterclone

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 3:24 am GMT

    I wont mind a Dead Space movie to be honest. From what i've seen of the game so far it looks great. But i want a real movie then, not an animated one

  • kweeni

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 2:59 am GMT

    a sims movie?? a nfs movie?? a whatever other ea game movie?? lol ea go suck some bigger balls

    ultimategamer31:
    *sigh* Anonther day, another EA sucker.

    lol so right

  • PandaBear86

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 1:50 am GMT

    Does this mean that we will see the same movie every year with a new title? I am Legend 2008, I am Legend 2009, I am Legend 2010, I am Legend 2011, lol, gotta love EA

  • raverrozza

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 1:10 am GMT

    need for speed!!!HA! thats all we need. another fast and the furious.and as for a sims movie?!?!?!?! no just no.

  • MasterLink01

    Posted Jul 24, 2008 12:28 am GMT

    EA is trying to build a monopoly on the industry. Thank you take2 for standing up to them and not caving

  • somberfox

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 9:23 pm GMT

    EA should get together with Uwe Boll. They're a perfect match.

  • dukerav

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 8:42 pm GMT

    Wtf, a Sims movie??

  • V-Nine

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 7:27 pm GMT

    Need for speed? a movie? ...I can picture it now, due to the piss poor stories starting in Underground, this will be a mixture between the movie Redline and the game Burnout (no offense to Burnout)... I am curious if it can top The Fast and The Furious series, Driven, Days of Thunder, Heart like a Wheel, Initial D, Wangan Midnight, or Torque for that matter. If this makes it hopefully someone will do a Midnight Club movie to rival it. Imagine a Gran Tourismo film, only if its done like Final Fantasy Spirtis Within ooops meant Advent Children

  • Phantom_2003

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 7:00 pm GMT

    Well, at least the Tom Clancy games would be a logical transition to a somewhat good movie, not like that Sims crap. How the hell do you make a movie based on a game with no story which is about your own boring life?

  • ultimategamer31

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 6:44 pm GMT

    *sigh* Anonther day, another EA sucker.

  • FrankenLife

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 6:43 pm GMT

    So many people claim to hate EA. That is until another game of theirs gets over hyped. They really are trying to take over the business completely.

    As it has been shown EA doesn't exactly have a track record for quality games. If you hate EA, the stop buying into the hype that surrounds every release of theirs.

  • tycoonmike

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 6:02 pm GMT

    NA3D- I didn't realize that companies had to be good and nice and not try to compete and survive in this capitalist society of ours. Simply because they've made some bogus deals in the past does not mean that they don't have the right to continue to make money. And if they shouldn't make any friends because of the tactics they use, then so be it.

  • NA3D

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 5:53 pm GMT

    "I'll admit that, if you asked me years ago, I still had thoughts that EA was the Evil Empire, the company that crushes the small studios...I'd have been surprised, if you told me a year ago that we'd end up with EA as a publisher." - Carmack from id

    So right after EA pushed out massive cash to get Carmack and others to say that type of crap, EA goes and does this to guarantee that they are still up to their old games.

    Lets see what EA's score is now....
    -2 for taking out BioWare and Pandemic
    -2 for going after TakeTwo and R*
    -1 for going after Ubisoft
    -2 for buying EAUbisoft.com and eatake2.com
    -5 this TV and Movie deal stuff
    -4 paying off people at E3 to talk nice about them
    -50 for not having an average game rating of at least 8.0 for at least since 1999
    -1 x number of poorly developed games that used to be made by companies they bought and successful then....
    +1 for every game over a 8.0 since 1999

    lets see, that puts them at around -125 i believe, and I am sure there is more to figure in....

    here are some stats
    Year / Games with 8.0+ Rating / Avg. Rating (GS stats)
    2001 3 7.6 (1/3 of the games shown/made to 2003-2007)
    2002 7 (2/3 of the games shown/made to 2003-2007)
    2003 7 7.3
    2004 7
    2005 6 7.3
    2006 4
    2007 5 7

  • sphinx-shadow

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 5:46 pm GMT

    cool i guess we have to wait and see what happens next.

  • PieCrusher

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 5:37 pm GMT

    I hate EA. They are like the generic brand of game developers.

  • SethandJeremy

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 5:32 pm GMT

    EA sucks.

  • Gamesterpheonix

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 5:25 pm GMT

    Wow. This is...retarded. Another shallow sell out of EA for show and hype. They are the witches of our time and should be burned at the stake.

  • darknferno12

    Posted Jul 23, 2008 4:49 pm GMT

    *tumbleweed rolls by*

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