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Sonic the Hedgehog co-creator Dmitri Johnson co-founded the new media company with John Wick writer/creator Derek Kolstad Story kitchen.
Johnson is the founder of dj2 Entertainment, which specializes in bringing beloved gaming franchises to wider entertainment with the hit Sonic the Hedgehog films and Tomb Raider: The Animated Series for Netflix.
In other words, we can expect more video game franchises to be turned into movies, which is the big Hollywood trend now and the opposite of what happened when movies were turned into games. I think of this as reverse transmedia, and it’s a reflection of how the gaming audience has grown. Both Kolstad and Johnson have talked about this at our past GamesBeat Summit events. I asked Johnson if this means he will still adapt video games to movies and TV shows.
“Absolutely! If anything, we will triple the changes. We already have some unannounced changes in the works, so we couldn’t be more excited,” Johnson said in an email.
The partners said in a statement: “After working together for the past few years and admiring each other’s narrative chops, energy, taste and ideas, we came to the same conclusion: that the only way to double the most amazing franchises and worlds – was for us to unite as one.”
We’ve seen this happen a lot lately, with Sony’s Uncharted movie, based on the Uncharted game series, and the upcoming TV series touting HBO about Sony’s The Last of Us video game. This is the usual transmedia strategy, except in reverse as it has historically focused on movies to games.
dj2 Entertainment continues its “first-look” rights deal with Amazon Studios, the studio that created the Amazon Prime show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power streaming series. That means Amazon Studios takes the first blows when adapting dj2 Entertainment concepts into movies or video series.
Mike Goldberg, an agent and former APA partner, will also join as co-founder of Story Kitchen. Story Kitchen becomes a new franchise-building media company. It will focus on creating and amplifying “world-building action” and non-traditional intellectual properties.
“When the whole world is a stage, Story Kitchen aims to be the Shakespearean leader in Gun-Fu, Popcorn-Fu and Controller-Fu,” the company said.
dj2 recently took a strategic first look at video game-to-producer with Swedish video game publisher Raw Fury to help them adapt their vast interactive catalog in television and film. Raw Fury is the prolific publisher of games like Norco and the indie hit Sable.
Dan Jevons, Tim Stevenson and Howard Bliss, formerly of dj2, will join the new company in senior leadership roles.
Kolstad is considered one of Hollywood’s best action writers as the writer of John Wick, who is now in post-production for his fourth film. Kolstad also helped Ubisoft adapt Splinter Cell for a Netflix TV show. He was working on a sequel to the Nobody movie and he was the producer of The Princess. Kolstad is working on building several other unannounced creative universes… more will be revealed later this year.
Johnson created dj2 Entertainment as a production company that edited video games for television and film. That company is working on a film adaptation of Hazelight’s It Takes Two video game and Life is Strange. Goldberg spent nine years at APA as an entertainment agent and partner. Story Kitchen will be represented by APA and Mike Goldberg’s customers are expected to remain with APA.
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