Two weeks ago at GenCon we caught up with Fantasy Flight Publishing CEO, Christian Petersen, to discuss FFG's foray into independent filmmaking with Midnight Chronicles (see 'Fantasy Flight's 'Midnight Chronicles'') and other emerging media technologies.

Why are you going into the movie business?

I think what's most important is that what we feel that things going on in the movie business today are going to change in the future.  I feel that the cellular walls between a consumer products company and an entertainment media company are really breaking down.  And as the revolution of media and how it's distributed and how it's made available to people are in a complete flux right now, there's going to be a lot of opportunities for companies who are inherently creative to make something for the niches out there that will be empowered by the movie to grab whatever they want, whenever they want it.

One of the motivators for us to do this is that our primary way as a game company to tell stories, build worlds, and create characters was via the role-playing section of the market.  But that has really deteriorated in the last couple years, making it almost financially unviable for us to go out and make anything creatively there with a significant investment to make it really fantastic.  Instead we decided we [should] go out and make something in live action media, whether it be movies, TV shows, iPod downloads, or cell phone mobisodes, and see if the types of character, story and world that can be derived and created from there can work in a synergetic way with the consumer products that we do.

So how will the film project work with your consumer products?

Midnight is a role-playing setting of ours.  It's a world we have that we believe has a strong, interesting twist on the fantasy narrative.  We believe fantasy is an area that's well developed and well established in the gaming industry, but there's really not enough media content for it. Lord of the Rings, obviously made a huge hit, but other than that, there seems to be a lot of demand for a plurality of different types of entertainment within the fantasy media.  When I say media I mean movies, or TV shows or mobisodes.  I think that medium in itself is going to be something that we're going to carry with us and so there's going to be a whole new definition of what that is.  I think it's becoming clear now with YouTube stuff. 

Obviously we hope to create a property that has interest to a large audience base.  We have the knowledge, capability and the personnel and infrastructure to put out consumer products and take advantage of that in-house, as opposed to a more traditional model where you make a world [and] you hope you have a plurality of licensers out there that come running at you to do your products. 

This project, the great experiment, is whether we can create something that is of high standard and high quality, and get people enthusiastic about storytelling that can be created in a way that's maybe a lot more cost effective than traditional media development has been.

So in this case, your consumer products were the source of the intellectual property for this media project.  Does that circle back to support sales of the consumer products and role-playing games once it comes out?

Right, exactly.  We have an RPG line that we think can hopefully have better sales by simply creating a media project where people can actually visualize the world as opposed to having to immediately trounce through this large tome of words and complex game information that role-playing games consist of.  You can argue that this is an expensive advertisement for the role-playing game if you like.  Obviously we hope it will be far greater than that and will go above and beyond just what it can do for a specific game in itself.  It's a whole investment in a way that companies hopefully can leapfrog into telling stories visually as well as a hook to consumer products.

We had Yu-Gi-Oh! as a shameless attempt at selling cards in a cartoon format that was incredibly successful.  I'm not trying to do anything as blatant as that, but you can have the world creators and the consumer product creators have more control and have more of the reward of the visual media.  That can be an interesting new option for businesses like ours.