TALENT AGENCY FORMS VIDEO GAMES UNIT
Copyright 2002 Reuters News Agency

[ November 1st 2002 ]

In another sign of the $9 billion video game industry's growing importance in Hollywood, top talent agency International Creative Management has formed a new division to adapt video games into movie and TV shows. The group will be headed by game veteran Keith Boesky who once served as president of Eidos Interactive Inc., the company behind the popular Lara Croft video games.

At Eidos, Boesky helped put the female action adventure hero on silver screens in 2001's hit summer movie Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which starred Angelina Jolie in the title role and hauled in over $250 million in global ticket sales. Larry Gordon, one of the producers behind Tomb Raider called Boesky, "the best person I know working in this area."

The video game market has been a gold mine from which Hollywood movie and TV producers can develop TV and film ideas because the games are largely the domain of teen boys and young men - one of the industry's key audiences. Currently several game-based movies are being developed from titles like Doom, and Spy Hunter with former wrestler turned actor The Rock (a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson) attached to play the lead role.

The video game industry is huge in its own right with 2001 U.S. video game sales rising 43 percent to $9.4 billion from the year before and eclipsing the $8.4 billion domestic box office for movies. Boesky's task will be linking up the makers of hit video games with Hollywood producers, actors and others who are keen to adapt the games into other entertainment properties.

Since 1999, Boesky has run his own company specializing in doing just that, working with movie studios like Universal and Paramount Pictures and video game makers such as Squaresoft. Eidos is a unit of Eidos Plc, Universal is part of Franco-American media company Vivendi Universal and Paramount is part of U.S. media giant Viacom Inc.