Battle lines drawn, blurred…

In the last 10 years, the line between blockbuster games and blockbuster movies has continued to blur. Think of the epic sweep of Halo 3 or the narrative mastery of Grand Theft Auto IV’s sprawling story.

Produced by teams that are as big as movie crews and with budgets to match, Blockbuster games are eating into blockbuster movies’ turf. At the same time, movies from The Matrix trilogy to 300 to Gamer have begun to look like games. Is the ground between them narrowing?

“The studios are still a little scared of videogames because they see them as  competition in some ways, sucking up valuable dollars,” says Paul WS Anderson.

“It used to be when you released a movie you worried about what sporting events were happening that weekend – would everyone be at home watching the football or baseball finals?

“In the last few years the studios are now saying: ‘Halo 3 is coming out this weekend, people are going to spend $50 on it and they’re probably not going to go to the cinema for days.’ There’s definitely an element of competition there.”

Good luck Roland Emmerich’s 2012 then, what with Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 coming out just ahead of the disaster flick’s release.

Next: Co-opetition...