Capcom to beef up presence in movie biz

Japan-based video game publisher Capcom has announced plans to beef up its presence in the movie industry, the Nikkei Shimbun reported this week.

The company reiterated its plans to release an animated film based on the Mega Man Battle Network games, which has already spawned an animated television series and other spin-off products, this spring. Similarly, a live-action film based on the company's Onimusha series was announced last year and is slated to release worldwide in 2006. A Devil May Cry movie is also in the works, reports the article.

But licensing its game series to film-production companies isn't all that Capcom has planned. The company also aims to produce more games based on popular films--specifically, games that continue and expand upon, rather than remake, movie storylines. (One recent example of how this might work is Capcom's recently released PlayStation 2 game based on the Tim Burton film The Nightmare Before Christmas.)

This year, Capcom saw modest box-office success with Resident Evil: Apocalypse, which topped the charts at $23.7 million in its September opening weekend. And Capcom is not alone in its desire to create more synergy between games and movies: Later in Septmeber, former Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi announced that he wanted Nintendo to move into animated-film production.