When 21st Century Fox was acquired by Disney in 2019 for $71 billion, IP like “Avatar” and “Alien” were absorbed into a company that had retired from making its own video games.a $26 billion bid for Paramount with private equity firm Apollo Global, presides over the PlayStation console empire. Skydance remains in negotiations with Paramount after its exclusive negotiating window expired over the weekend and has long been working on growing its gaming presence with a former PlayStation exec.
Bringing Paramount IP in-house would allow both Skydance divisions to diversify their efforts significantly beyond licensing established IP from the likes of Disney, which has crowded the gaming marketFull access to the Paramount library would afford either company greater shares of game sales derived from its IP, especially Sony, which wouldn’t have to share sales revenue with another storefront.
Warner Bros. Games’ “Hogwarts Legacy” showed the potential for video games to rejuvenate aging film franchises. Set 100 years before the main “Harry Potter” series of books and films, it became theon console and PC in 2023 — one of few titles to beat the annual “Call of Duty” entries since 2009 — and did so after Warners had put planned “Fantastic Beasts” sequelsfor Disney that underperformed alongside two of its Marvel films last year.