Blacklight set up as a movie at Fox Atomic while the game's still in the works

ML: Our simple innovation in game design is that you can jump from one teammate to another instantaneously.

It sounds easy, but making the [artificial intelligence] so it doesn’t run around like an ant to catch up with the character you take over requires a lot of work. Also, the game has a lot of verticality in it. I think that is critical to success in an urban environment. We want it to feel like you can get up high and snipe. Getting A.I. to work in vertical space is very difficult.

BF: How much of the game have you already built? What did you show to Fox and Union that sold them? Are all the key features there and you just need to build out the levels?

ML: We built a vertical slice of the game. We proved out all the major technical hurdles, so we're confident we could go into production at this stage. There are things like holographic ads. If you're going to have those all over the place, you've got to figure out a way to do them efficiently and have overhead for cool special effects, lots of enemy A.I., etc. We're taking our eight years of experience in Unreal 3 and applying a lot of tricks.

BF: Why did you decide to set it up at a movie studio before you even have a publisher? And how did it happen?

Dan Jevons: I was aware of some of the stuff they’d been developing at Zombie. Mark showed me an art test with action that was fantastic. Further to that, we took a look at the game design and concept. It startled me that Mark already had a vision for transmedia development. He had a prequel, the main story, and a number of sequels that all mixed together and told interesting parts of a narrative in a really interesting universe.

"Blacklight has really interesting characters and a "Children of Men"-type story that we thought would make a great movie. We have been specializing recently in trying to take game concepts to movie studios and this looked like it made sense.

Dmitri Johnson: Dan showed it to me the day before Thanksgiving break. I immediately saw a film in it and thought of "the Eric Lieb" at Fox Atomic. Not just because he's a huge gamer, but having the comic book outlet, it seemed like the perfect home to tell the "Blacklight" story. So I harassed Mr. Lieb over break and he was kind enough to take a look.

R. Eric Lieb: When Dmitri sent it over, there was a confluence of events. The transmedia aspect was very intriguing because in addition to my work on the film side, I oversee our comic book and graphic novel division.

Also, from a conceptual level, the narrative of "Blacklight" really keyed into something my colleagues and I were trying to develop internally. So it kind of fit in a number of different slots. It helped that I'm  a big gamer myself -- I've been playing since ColecoVision days. Seeing all the materials behind it, looking at the world and the potential in it, I thought it was exceptionally cool. I saw definite possibilities for something that could be developed organically as a movie, video game, and comic book that tie in together.

BF: Do you guys think this approach will make your products better than if you did the game, then the movie, etc.?

Mark Long: As a developer who has worked on licensed properties adapted for games, it can be a great frustration. You're constantly yelling at your monitor, saying, "Why the fuck did you do this? Why cant we fix this one thing that would make my life so much easier?"

The holy grail for a developer is to be at the point of origin. If you are, you can begin to have a dialogue about all kinds of things. We not only share the creation of the story, but share resources. We can share hi-res models, because now developers are doing things in the million-poly[gon] range needed for cinematic resolution.

REL: It's not a question of whether there's a better way to do things or if we're reinventing the wheel. It's just that this was a cool opportunity to at one point develop a film and video game concurrently. We're going to have the feature writer build out the world. We'll create a film narrative and video game narrative and have them complement each other.

Rich Leibowitz: "Blacklight" is a good example of treating game developers like talent. Most of the time, you do deals in the game business that take properties already released into a licensing deal. Or a film property that's coming out some time in the future gets set up with game publisher. But not often do you find deals in which the developer is treated as talent when they set up their project at studios. That's what we love doing.

BF: Mark, does that mean you'll be working with Fox's writer to flesh out the story?

ML: We have a bible already. After we came to an agreement on Fox Atomic acquiring the property, the first thing Eric asked me to do is prepare a bible for the writer and producers. We met with the writer and quickly resolved a couple of issues as to what what belongs in the comics, the feature, the game, etc.. Right now, the writer owns the main thruline. He’s going to pick and choose what he wants from the bible and we'll design around that.

It's very important to me that you don’t replay the movie. Though on the other hand, I don’t want it be like "The Matrix" where you don’t play as Neo.

REL: The whole thing about transmedia that's so appealing is that each respective medium has storytelling strengths and the ability to tie them together in their own unique ways is compelling. If you look at how media is consumed now, especially by young people, they're playing games, watching online videos, going to the movies, and watching at home. There are a wide range of options. If you're able to tap into each of those to tell one cohesive story, that’s powerful. And as a comics fan, a movie lover, and a video game fanatic, it’s pretty cool.