Director Gore Verbinski is getting into the video game industry.

The helmer of such pictures as The Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Rango has announced a deal with Microsoft, where his Blind Wink transmedia company will produce original interactive content for Microsoft platforms, including the Xbox 360, Windows Phone and Windows-based PCs.

The deal includes, but is not limited to, video games, the first of which will be released in late 2012. Microsoft says the title, which Wink is developing internally, will be made specifically for Kinect.

“Audiences consume content very differently today," said Verbinski.  "As an idea house, we at Blind Wink are looking forward to our partnership with Microsoft.  Their various platforms give us access to new methods of distribution, allowing us to extend into emerging markets and connect more directly with the audience." 

Facebook's a great way to waste 10-15 minutes. You can catch up with friends. You can let everyone know about the mundane details of your day. And you can learn more about your favorite brands and entertainment content.

Unfortunately, that 10-15 minutes often ends up being a lot longer per day – and, as a result, social media has grown into a viable threat to entertainment companies who are alredy fighting for viewers' attention..

A new Nielsen study finds that Americans spend more time on Facebook than anywhere else on the Web. While there's no real surprise there, the sheer volume of time people are spending is staggering.

In May 2011, we spent 53.5 billion minutes on the site. In other words, in one month, people spent the equivalent of over 101,000 years reading status updates and looking at photos.

Put another way, Facebook's dwell time is higher than that of Yahoo!, Google, all of the AOL sites and all of the MSN/Bing sites put together – with nearly 3 billion minutes to spare.

That's why more studios are looking to monetize that audience. Warner Bros. began offering movie rentals through Facebook in March. Now Miramax is jumping on that bandwagon, utilizing the Ooyala social service, allowing people to chat about the movies with others as they watch.

Facebook (and other, smaller social networks) present an attractive potential audience for video on demand – and an additional revenue stream. So far, though, the experiments have focused on older catalog releases. What many people want to know, though, is when a studio will be willing to try streaming a new home release on the site.

Social networks also present an opportunity. Ooyala's tech lets studios arrange private film streamings/screenings, which could be a low-cost way to run focus groups for trailers or test bonus content for DVD/Blu-Ray.

Facebook represents a wide open world for the entertainment industry. The question is: Who will learn to capitalize on it first?

Rentals will cost $2 per day – as opposed to the $1 per day rate the company charges for DVDs and the  $1.50 it gets for Blu-Rays. Games will be available for the Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

DS owners are out of luck, though. While the company did experiment with handheld games during its market tests, it has decided to ignore systems like the Nintendo DS to focus on home consoles.

"At this point in time, we're focusing on the [home console market] based on the overall installed base of those platforms and [their use of the] physical media that we're familiar with," says Joel Resnik, vice president of games for Redbox. "The handheld is in transition. … I feel like it's an upside opportunity down the road."

Kiosks will generally have an initial library of 20 unique titles. The company hopes to expand that to 24 in the coming months. Resnik says Redbox expects to offer 80-100 unique titles per year.

The company spent two years testing game rentals via a pilot program. While they were only available in 5,000 kiosks, Redbox still managed to rack up over 1 million rentals.

Rockstar Games has been edging towards a Hollywood model for quite some time now, but the film community is finally taking notice.

The Tribeca Film Festival will present a one-hour gameplay session of "L.A. Noire" at this year's event, followed by a question and answer session. Scheduled to take place April 25, this is the first time the festival has recognized a video game.

“We’re thrilled that 'L.A. Noire' is being recognized by the Tribeca Film Festival in this way,” said Rockstar Games founder Sam Houser. “It’s a real honor, and another step forward for interactive entertainment.”

Geoff Gilmore chief creative officer of Tribeca Enterprises (and a former director of the Sundance Film Festival) will oversee the Q&A, which will focus on the making of the game, the technology behind it, and story and action in this medium.

Like many Rockstar games before it, "L.A. Noire" pushes new boundaries in the interactive space. Rather than stretching gameplay methods this time, though, the revolutions are in the incredibly lifelike characters that populate the world.

That's more than window dressing. It's essential to the game, as you play a detective working to solve a series of mysteries. To successfully do that, you'll need to read the body language of people you're questioning. The facial animation scans, done by Culver City-based Depth Analysis, make that possible.

Warner Bros. is doubling down with Facebook.

Roughly three weeks after offering "The Dark Knight" for streaming via the social network, the studio has added five more films – including a trio of recent releases.

“Inception,” “Life as We Know It” and “Yogi Bear” are all available immediately, each carrying a $4 price tag. That's a buck higher than the catalog content the studio offers, which (in addition to "The Dark Knight") now includes “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” and “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".

Warner's being selective with its rollouts, relying on the popularity of films with the Facebook audience guide its choices. Execs say the fan pages for Harry Potter and "Inception" are "two of the most popular and active communities on the site."

As with the first Facebook offering, Buyers will be able to watch the film through their Facebook account for up to 48 hours from purchase and pay with Facebook credits, rather than directly via a credit card.

Films can be viewed in full-screen and watched in segments (with the film resuming where left off the next time user log in). Users can also use other Facebook features while watching the film, such as posting comments or status updates.

Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and the rest are getting their own online world.

Hasbro and Runescape developer Jagex have announced plans to create a massively multiplayer game based on the popular 80s toy line and cartoon series. Unlike recent single-player games published by Activision, though, this will have nothing to do with director Michael Bay's 2007 cinematic reboot of the series.

Details are sparse right now beyond the target date. Jagex says the game will be "action-packed" (duh) – implying a never-ending war between players taking sides among the Autobots and Decepticons.

The Transformers first appeared in stores in 1984 and blasted almost immediately onto the pop culture scene via a Saturday morning syndicated cartoon series that ran for four years. The cartoon resurfaced in the mid 1990s, when Hasbro rebroadcast the original series with a flashy computer-generated title sequence. They've had a gaming presence since the days of the Commodore 64. 

Join us at 10 am PST for a live chat with "Battle: Los Angeles" vfx supervisor Everett Burrell.

The Creator's Project, a creative showcase initiative created by processor giant Intel and media company Vice (which is behind Vice Magazine and VBS.tv), is undergoing a dramatic expansion.

The initiative will today announce the launch of a multi-million dollar major studio that will produce multimedia works for leading and emerging talents from the art, film, design and music worlds.

The Studio, as it's called, will provide technology and resources to artists and help them release albums, artwork and films, which will be released through a variety of channels including traveling international exhibits, museums, concerts and digital platforms (like The Creator's Project website).

"We created The Studio because the status quo in media right now is a tragedy," said Vice founder Shane Smith. "Whether it's in film, music or the fine arts, a lack of access to production and distribution has left some young artists disenfranchised and frustrated. The Creators Project created The Studio to show the world that there is another model for supporting creativity, a model where the artist, and the artwork come first. To show our commitment we will produce and distribute artworks globally while allowing The Studio artists to own, forever, any of the work that they create for us."

The first works from The Studio will debut at Coachella.

Intel, for its part, has been expanding its reach into the entertainment field lately. In late January, it tapped Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am to be director of creative innovation – although no one, including will.i.am, seems to be entirely sure of what that job will entail. 

Variety tech guru David Cohen answers your questions about the industry. Chat starts at 10 a.m. PST.

Paramount Pictures has teamed with browser-based game developer Funtactix to create an online game based upon its upcoming animated feature "Rango."

The game, dubbed "Rango: The World" will bow alongside the film on March 4 and allow fans to create an avatar and explore the movie's world with friends and strangers. Players will interact with characters from the film – minus Johnny Depp's titular chameleon – and complete quests and play minigames.

The title marks the first major usage of Funtactix' new technology, which is specifically built to tie in with film.

“Rango: The World is the first announced game that uses our revolutionary ’The World’ solution, which lets us bring animation film assets into a web-based game without compromising fidelity or authenticity,” said Sam Glassenberg, CEO of Funtactix. “Rango is a visually groundbreaking feature; combining the film’s assets with our technology provided the perfect springboard for us to permanently raise the bar for browser-based games and bring the world of Rango to the massive audience of fans on the web.”

"Rango: The World" will operate independently of the console tie-in games for the film.