MTV Games announced Wednesday an agreement with famed film and television producer Jerry Bruckheimer to develop a new video game studio.

Viacom, parent company of MTV and MTV Games, hopes to capitalize on the producer’s entertainment and drama successes and build Bruckheimer’s original style into modern interactive entertainment.

“Video games represent a new and innovative medium for what we’ve always tried to do, which is to tell great stories,” Bruckheimer said. “But this medium is unique in that it gives the player control over how those stories unfold.”

The new gaming studio will work on all phases of game creation from concept to marketing, MTV Games said in a statement Wednesday. MTV will tap Jeff Yapp, executive vice president of programming enterprises, and Bob Picunko, VP of electronic games and interactive products to work directly with Bruckheimer’s studio.

The resulting games will have the benefit of immense targeted marketing on all MTV/Viacom television networks and Internet channels, which will attempt to generate a buzz among the MTV fan base and translate that into sales.

MTV announced in August that they would invest more than $500 million over the next two years info developing interactive products. They have already seen success after purchasing Harmonix in 2006. Harmonix developed the original Guitar Hero games as well as the new hit, Rock Band.

Bruckheimer is responsible for some of the biggest movies and television shows ever including Top Gun, The Rock, Black Hawk Down, Crimson Tide, Bad Boys, Gone in 60 Seconds, National Treasure and the Pirates of the Caribbean series. He also produced King Arthur, which is a great watch if you are looking for something that rings somewhere between Braveheart and [insert any medieval movie here].

Bruckheimer is no stranger to video games. Many of his properties have been turned into games, but most of them have met minimal success due to low budgets and the stigma of movie-to-video-game titles. Games included:

  • A dark ages tale of the knights of the roundtable in “King Arthur,” which saw a PS2/Xbox/GC adaptation to reviews in the 6’s and 7’s
  • Highly (financially) successful game ports of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” series
  • Awful mobile phone ports of National Treasure
  • Bad Boys: Miami Takedown on the Playstation 2, one of the worst of a thousand games to hit the PS2
  • A series of poorly reviewed PC games based on the CSI television show
  • A whole bunch of Top Gun flight sims

Bruckheimer also has a movie coming out in 2009 based on the the Prince of Persia video game series called “Prince of Persia: Sands of Time.”

It’s a fair bet that future Bruckheimer-title-based video games will have the financial and technical backing of this new studio. No word yet on the original content they are looking to develop, but if Bruckheimer is making a serious leap into the video game world, it’s definitely worth paying attention.

About The Author

John Guilfoil is the editor-in-chief of Blast: Boston's Online Magazine and the Blast Magazine Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Tweet @johnguilfoil.

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