Vince Zampella, the former Infinity Ward CEO, and Jason West, the studio’s former president, have agreed to be represented by the Creative Artists Agency, according to the Los Angeles Times. Both were ousted March 1 by IW’s parent, Activision, which had alleged insubordination. They’ve responded with a wrongful termination and breach-of-contract lawsuit.
The Times points out that most game developers are not represented by talent agents, so for CAA, bringing in arguably the two most coveted free agents in the games business is quite the gold star on their portfolio of clients. The Times adds that the duo were pursued by “at least one of the other top Hollywood agencies.”
It’s hard to imagine the pair hurting for offers. Bringing in professional talent managers probably means this is a “have your people talk to my people” type of A-list job search, and for that, they need to have people.
Fired ‘Call of Duty’ developers sign with CAA [Los Angeles Times]
wepoo
Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 3:57 PMOh, these guys could score a special guest slot on Entourage.
Justin Robson
Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 6:14 PMSo does this mean they’re working on films now?
I was kind of hoping they’d get control over their own development studio type deal, and create their own IP.
Thermal Ions
Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 6:23 PMSo I wonder who is paying who?
Jay
Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 9:17 PMHang on… are they allowed to just go and develop a new game right now with someone like EA if they wanted to? Or does Activision have some contract crap against them to prevent them from doing so for a period of time????
MS should really get in on it – grab them for 343, heck I would feel a little bit more safe with the Halo franchise knowing that 2 guys who created the COD are working on it since Bungie won’t be.
David Wildgoose
Saturday, March 13, 2010 at 9:48 PMI’m pretty sure such contract clauses aren’t legally enforceable in California where both Activision and Infinity Ward are based.
mambodog
Sunday, March 14, 2010 at 12:56 AMFrom the article: “landing the top game developers behind one of the industry’s biggest franchises marks a coup for CAA”
Goddamnit I hate it when journalists use the word ‘coup’ like this! IT DOESN’T MEAN WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS, GUYS.
doubleDizz
Monday, March 15, 2010 at 5:17 PMWhen I read “one of Hollywood’s biggest talent agencies” I immediately picture Jeremy Piven aka Ari Gold hahaha.
There’s been a number of articles over the last 12 months that have interviews with game developers who have all said the video game industry will slowly become more and more similar to that of the Hollywood film industry, due to the increasing size of development and marketing budgets.
Maybe this is proof of the beginning of that?