5 replies to this topic

[Corvus Antaka]

So,

Can anyone tell me who actually owns the rights and needs to be negotiated with to produce a mechwarrior/battletech movie?

Been digging around the internet and it sounds like a convoluted mess of FASA/wizkids/microsoft/topps games, and PGI seems to be to busy or unsure to answer this question.

Any help here would be greatly appreciated and not forgotten.

Thanks in advance.

[Daetrin Voltari]

BattleTech was created by FASA, who held the IP rights to the universe up until they withdrew from the market in 2001. They licensed limited rights to a number of third parties (such as Ral Partha to produce miniatures, publishing houses for comics, and later Roc Books for the novels, among others). The rights to produce computer games were with FASA Interactive, which was eventually sold - including the IP rights to computer games - to Microsoft.

In 2001, FASA ceased its active operations and the BattleTech IP (minus the computer games license now held by Microsoft) was transferred to WizKids, a new firm owned by FASA co-founder Jordan Weisman. WizKids split the IP, creating Classic BattleTech and MechWarrior: Dark Age as separate brands.

The Classic BattleTech IP was licensed to FanPro, a German games publisher who had previously produced the German edition of BattleTech, in the summer of 2001. FanPro had created FanPro LLC, a US-based sister company, to continue the original, English-language BattleTech line.
Meanwhile, WizKids produced a new Clix-based game in the MechWarrior: Dark Age setting, set almost a century after the current BattleTech timeline.

In 2003, WizKids was bought by the Topps company. In the same year, they granted a license to InMediaRes to publish new, canon BattleTech material on the internet, which led to the creation of the BattleCorps site.

In 2007, FanPro's BattleTech license ran out and was not renewed. In their stead, InMediaRes acquired the full license from Topps/WizKids, and created theirCatalyst Game Labs subsidiary to continue the classic game line.

Topps terminated WizKids as a brand in 2008 and discontinued the Clix game lines, including MechWarrior: Dark Age. Ever since, Classic BattleTech is marketed simply as BattleTech again. The license remained with InMediaRes.



from http://www.sarna.net...eTech_franchise


Essentially, Microsoft has the video game rights and licences them to various groups such as PGI. Everything else is owned by Topps with the rights licensed to Catalyst Game Labs / InMediaRes Productions. So Topps owns the rights and would make any decision about a licensing deal for a movie.

Edited by Daetrin Voltari, 29 March 2013 - 10:02 PM.

[VerusZetec]

I really wish they would make a movie or television series out of this. Think Game of Thrones with mechs! There's a ton of great lore that would make for fascinating TV, and CGI has gotten to the point that it shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. (If it is still too expensive, I can only imagine that cost is going down significantly each year.)

[dal10]

there was a movie that had peter jackson signed as the director about 5 years ago, tis currently in development hell.

[Steinar Bergstol]

VerusZetec, on 01 April 2013 - 04:33 PM, said:

I really wish they would make a movie or television series out of this. Think Game of Thrones with mechs! There's a ton of great lore that would make for fascinating TV, and CGI has gotten to the point that it shouldn't be prohibitively expensive. (If it is still too expensive, I can only imagine that cost is going down significantly each year.)

This.

Start in the 3020's, maybe using bits from the Grey Death Legion trilogy together with the Warrior trilogy and go from there. There's years and years of material to use. You'd get to follow the major characters as they grew older through the 4th succession war, the war of 3039, the clan invasion and so on. The Clan Invasion could even be made out to be a properly big deal if you've gotten the viewers used to the pre-invasion status quo first.

[Arnold Carns]

There had been an news article in the german Gaming Magazine named "WunderWelten", published by Fantasy Productions, who held the rights for the german localization for all things BattleTech that days. According to that article (Issue #19, October 1993 )Virtual World Entertainment and New Line Cinema did publicly announce the production of a BattleTech movie on the 23rd of September 1993. The article listed Tim Disney, Jordan Weisman and Richard Fink as Executive Producers. Michael De Luca was named for New Line Cinema. That's the last what was heard of from that project, I went through every later issue of that mag but couldn't find anything about a cancellation. Maybe New Line still holds the rights, but I don't think so.

Edited by Arnold Carns, 03 April 2013 - 07:33 AM.