Megan Ellison’s Annapurna Pictures Launches New Video Game Division
Production company Annapurna Pictures announced on Thursday, December 1, that it is expanding its operations with the addition of the division Annapurna Interactive, which will be devoted to producing and publishing video games.
“I’ve had a great passion for video games for as long as I can remember. Growing up, ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ was one of my all-time favorites. My brother and I ran up quite a bill calling the 1-900 numbers for tips on those games, before the internet provided game-guides,” said Megan Ellison, Annapurna’s founder and CEO, in a statement. “The artistry and diversity of interactive storytelling is exciting and we look forward to exploring the limitless possibilities in gaming. We want to empower artists across this medium to make Annapurna Interactive their home and I believe we’ve assembled the perfect team to make that happen.”
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Annapurna Interactive will focus on “developing personal, emotional, and original games that push the boundaries of interactive content and encourage artists to bring new visions to the medium.”
The department already has its first two projects that it’ll be publishing sometime in spring 2017. The games are: Jason Roberts’ “Gorogoa,” a “beautifully hand-illustrated story suspended inside a puzzle with a unique mechanic where the player moves panels on a grid as though arranging framed drawings on a wall,” and Giant Sparrow’s “What Remains of Edith Finch,” which is “a playable collection of short stories, each with different art styles and gameplay mechanics centered around the cursed Finch family.”
The division will also release games from San Francisco-based developer Funomena and “Katamari Damacy” franchise creator Keita Takahashi.
Annapurna Pictures was founded in 2011. The production company’s credits include “Sausage Party,” “Wiener-Dog,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” and most recently Mike Mills’ “20th Century Women.”
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