OZombie — American McGee’s zombie take on the Oz stories — has been taken off of Kickstarter so its studio, Spicy Horse, can focus on securing the film rights to the Alice series McGee created.
The two efforts had been paired in a $US950,000 Kickstarter campaign that Spicy Horse was unable to then separate into two different campaigns. “The submission has been rejected multiple times and our appeals have failed (multiple campaigns are not allowed),” McGee wrote. To launch a campaign for the Alice film rights means we must first shut down the Oz campaign.”
That said, McGee admitted that OZombie‘s performance — about 15 per cent of the $US950,000 goal has been raised with 20 days to go — factored into the decision. “Projections suggest we’ll hit 30 per cent of our goal by campaign end,” he said.
OZombie was to have been a game in which Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Lion battle a zombie horde raised by the Scarecrow.
McGee said that an OZombie campaign could always be restarted later. “The Alice film rights are only within reach during a rapidly closing window of opportunity. We’ll sacrifice Oz today in order to have a real chance with Alice.”
Earlier this month, McGee explained that Spicy Horse was in talks to acquire the rights to Alice and make a movie with them. For $US100,000, they’d have the right to make animated shorts. For another $US400,000, they could purchase the licence outright and make a feature film. OZombie had just kicked off on June 24, so the studio hoped to pair the two, hoping one would raise awareness of the other. It gained only $US23,000 in funding since the team-up was announced.
“Securing these film rights would be nothing short of a major coup,” McGee said. “We’d control a significant portion of Alice’s future. Being able to produce animations, feature films and related merchandise means keeping Alice’s world fresh, no matter what else might happen with the game portion of the property.”
Spicy Horse still is in talks with EA about a third game in the series, called Alice: Otherlands.
End of the Rainbow [Kickstarter]
Comments
7 responses to “OZombie Shuttered As American McGee Pursues Alice Film Rights”
American McGee… a true one trick pony… move on dude. Find another property to make mediocre games about already.
He does seem to use the same theme over and over again. What if we took a childrens book or story and added dark and macabre things.
And Wizard of Oz with Zombies doesn’t seem that Original to be honest. Especially after the Prequel was recently released in cinemas. Zombies are big right now, Wizard of Oz reminds us there is a rich story to work with. 2 + 2 = 4.
He’d been planning an Oz game way back since 2004 or earlier, so it’s not really a piggybacking on Disney thing…
The biggest problem with American McGee is he’s a ‘Gunner’ guy. He’s ‘Gunner’ do this, he’s ‘Gunner’ do that. Even when he was initially majorly succesful he was spouting off about what he was ‘gunner’ do rather than actually doing things, this caused a lot of people to see what he was, empty promises and hot air. I’ve been watching this guy since day 1 and he’s just a very average guy, a Burton/McFarlane/Clive Barker wannabe and hasn’t really shown anything interesting so far?
It has great potential to be a freaky movie though.
Of course you’re entitled to your opinion, but I thoroughly enjoyed both games, so I am looking forwards to the 3rd.
To be clear I’m not knocking the games, just the fact that adding darkness to kids stories was fresh the first time he did it, but doing it twice with a different story it’s no longer fresh. And let’s be honest both Alice in Wonderland and the series of Oz books get darker the longer you read.
It’s sort of why I’m going to buy Halo 5, it’s the 8th Halo game and it’s not going to turn things upside down and be new and fresh but it is enjoyable.