LOS ANGELES — Avatar producer Jon Landau says getting game developers to work directly with forward-thinking filmmakers is the solution to Hollywood’s long-standing videogame problem.
The process for developing movie-themed games “can’t be studio-driven,” Landau told Wired.com. “It has to be filmmaker-driven. I think [game companies] need to go find the Jim Camerons, Steven Spielbergs and Peter Jacksons of the world and develop the relationships with them.”
Landau’s comments came after his keynote interview at the 3D Gaming Summit here Thursday, the same day Avatar was released on Blu-ray and DVD. During the keynote, Landau detailed the ways that his filmmaking team helped Ubisoft make the stereoscopic 3-D Avatar videogame — and blamed 20th Century Fox for several missteps that may have hurt the game.

Fox didn’t quite understand Ubisoft’s needs when it came to marketing and making the game, Landau said. A reluctance to allow Ubisoft to release an early trailer, for instance, made it harder for James Cameron’s Avatar: The Game to find its audience.
Games based on hit movies have a long history of turning cinematic gold into videogame slag. The Avatar game — based on the No. 1 box office success of all time — was no exception to the movie-game curse: Despite close collaboration between the movie and game teams, the videogame met with mixed reviews and didn’t sell that well. In a January conference call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said the game was released too late in the year and that sales dropped sharply once the holidays were over.
Still, there were some successes along the way, Landau said. A digital-asset-management system created by the film production helped get art to Ubisoft — a process that saved the game company months of development time.
But the all-important relationship between movie studios and game companies needs improvement, according to the producer, whose rather short cinematic resume also includes another little movie by James Cameron that you might have heard of: Titanic.
“I wish it was coming together more,” Landau said of the connection between gamemakers and Hollywood players.
Like most at the 3D Gaming Summit, Landau remains bullish on the notion of how stereoscopic imagery will transform entertainment. Landau said he thinks 3-D will accentuate games the way stereo sound has heightened the cinematic experience.
“3-D is the cheddar on the ice cream sundae,” he said. “Down the road everybody’s going to expect it for every game.”]