Everyone Wants To Franchise Rocket League
In a market crowded with desperate indie games, one title somehow managed to break out of the noise and become an overnight success: Rocket League, Psyonix’s soccer-with-cars smash hit. And now that everyone’s playing it, everyone with money wants a piece of it.
Jeremy Dunham, Psyonix’s vice president of marketing, lays out the situation: “We’ve had discussions with various people and studios in Hollywood about making movies based on Rocket League, or a TV show. We’ve had people come our way with possible toy deals and lots of cross-promotions outside of our game. We are getting to the point where the people who want to work with us are much much more famous. It’s crazy. The meetings that I have with new companies who I didn’t realize were Rocket League players — it blows my mind.”
From a business standpoint, it makes sense to strike now before someone else does. These people are fully aware Minecraft and Angry Birds had similar origins, and now they sell countless products based on their brands. It doesn’t matter HOW a movie based on Rocket League would work, the point is to get one in production before Rival Studio X beats you to it. (It is, however, less of a stretch to make an animated movie about talking cars, or a live-action Vin Diesel flick where he and six friends perform gigantic car stunts in an arena, than it is to make a movie out of Minecraft, which someone is still trying to do.)
Whether all this happens depends on what Psyonix is willing to settle for, and when. The ball’s in their court, and every car in the area is after it.
