Epic Games may soon be acquired by the privately-held motion picture financing company Legendary Pictures. Sources from within both companies have said that talks are underway, according to a Variety report.
Back in July reports emerged that Legendary Pictures will be co-financing and co-producing the Gears of War movie adaptation. Now it appears that the co-operative business has led to both companies discussing the possibility of an acquisition.
If the meetings between both parties are promising, Legendary Pictures could be the very first film-financing group to move their investments into videogames. But of course Epic would offer more than game IP. The privately-held developer is also the proprietor of the very successful and popular Unreal Engine, a game engine of which Epic licenses out to provide a relatively stable and secure stream of income as opposed to the hit-and-miss world of videogame releases.
Epic VP Mark Rein told Edge in an e-mail that the buyout report "is just another rumor," stopping short of flatly denying talks are in process.
He added, "We're not going to comment on the rumor. ... We have already publicly announced that we're working with Legendary pictures on the Gears of War movie and that we have the utmost respect for [Legendary Pictures CEO] Thomas Tull and his organization."
Back in November 2006, ex-Microsoft market Jeff Bell first stated that Gears of War was going to be a trilogy. Considering the commercial success of the first and the buzz for the second, it may be clear to Legendary Pictures that the third iteration is set to deliver a lot of revenue.
Kris Graft contributed to this report.