Lionsgate bolsters its game division with free-to-play studio deal

Lionsgate Entertainment continues to chase game development, announcing this week that it has formed a partnership with the newly-minted Next Games that will see the film-centric entertainment company investing an undisclosed sum in the Finnish developer. You may remember Next Games as the free-to-play game studio founded in Helsinki last year by former Rovio, Disney and Supercell developers. The studio raised $6 million in its first round of public funding, and is currently working on a free-to-play mobile game (No Man's Land) based on AMC's The Walking Dead series as well as another undisclosed project. Lionsgate made a show of getting into the games business earlier this year when it launched its new Interactive Ventures and Games division, which is managed by Peter Levin and tasked with investing in existing game and interactive entertainment projects, supporting new game projects and figuring out a way to release games based on Lionsgate's stable of entertainment franchises. "Gaming is a logical next step in extending our content portfolio, and we're very excited about the potential of our partnership with Next Games," stated Levin in a press release announcing the partnership. "We see them as a prolific source of the next generation of games, creating exciting and engaging properties based on our franchises as well as new content that we develop together." The company recently tapped Kabam to make its next Hunger Games mobile tie-in, and now it seems to be investing in Next Games in order to expand its development capabilities.