Jason Hall: Moving From Gaming To Movies

Jason Hall is one of the most outspoken people in the video game industry. As the founder and CEO of game developer Monolith he was in charge of the company behind memorable games like Blood, Shogo and the No One Lives Forever action titles. Three years ago, he moved from Monolith to become the vice president of Warner Brothers Interactive (Warner Bros. bought Monolith about a few months later), promising that he would lead the company to a new era of mixing the game industry and Hollywood. The results have been a tad mixed. While some projects like Justice League Heroes did well one of Hall's pet projects, the MMO title The Matrix Online, didn't reach its expectations.

On Tuesday it was revealed that Hall was stepping down as VP of Warner Bros. Interactive and that his once former producer Samantha Ryan (now the CEO of Monolith) would take over his dutes while still running Monolith. FiringSquad chatted with Hall briefly on the phone on Tuesday evening about the switchover and his new venture, HDFilms Inc.

First off Hall said that his departure from Warner Bros. Interactive was voluntary for him adding that in his three years at the company he helped it to grow from merely a licensing company to one that actually developed, sold, and marketed games on their own. "Justice League Heroes is an example," he told us. "We handled everything about the game except for distribution." (Eidos actually distributed the game to stores in fall 2006). Now the final piece of the puzzle has been put in place as Warner Bros. has a deal to distribute Codemasters's games in the US for a year. Warner Bros. also bought a 10 percent interest in SCi (the parent company of Eidos) in exchange for giving SCi a number of Warner Bros. properties to turn into games.

So now Hall told us he felt the time had come to turn away from the business side and concentrate on the creative side. Enter his production company HDFilms Inc. While the name of the company suggests high definition movies, Hall told us, "HD actually stands for Hall Digital." The production company has a first look deal with Warner Bros. and indeed Hall told us that his office is still on the Warner Bros. lot, saying, "I'm just moving across the street." The deal will have HDFilms develop movies, TV shows and, yes, video game concepts. While we have seen many movie and TV makers help develop games, Hall feels this is the first time that someone who started in the game industry has now garndered a production deal with a major movie company. "We will be in a position to bring these concepts to the studio for production review," he said. He emphasized that he will still be an executive producer for many current Warner Bros. Interactive titles.

One of those games is the long-in-development Dirty Harry title, which has gone into stealth mode since an E3 2006 press conference last May with Harry Callahan himself (Clint Eastwood to you and me) promoting his involvement in the title based on the classic police-crime film series. Hall told us that the game (developed by The Collective) will continue to be under the radar until they are ready to show it off (he declined to offer a release date for the game). Other Warner Bros. Interactive titles on the way include the PSP exclusive action game based on the upcoming action film 300 and a new Loony Tunes based title. Hall didn't comment when we threw out other possible future games based on Warner Bros. owner properties. When we asked about a possible Babylon 5 title he would only say, "Wouldn't that be cool?".

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