In a bid to expand their unique marriage of TV and gaming, Xbox Entertainment Studios have today announced an original documentary series, exclusive to Xbox, debuting in 2014.
Simon Chinn, producer of Man on Wire and Jonathan Chinn, producer of PBS’s American High, will bring the power of their new multi-platform media company, Lightbox, to Xbox One and Xbox 360, and create a series of films around the extraordinary events and characters that have given rise to the digital age.
“Our goal is to produce a series of compelling and entertaining docs which will deploy all the narrative techniques of Simon’s and my previous work. It’s particularly exciting to be partnering with filmmakers like Zak Penn who come to this process from other filmmaking disciplines and who will bring their own distinctive creative vision to this,” added Jonathan Chinn.
The first film will focus on, arguably, the worst game of all-time: ET the Video Game.
Back in 1983, millions of copies of the game were made, but due to the poor reception and lack of gaming popularity at the time, remained unsold and were buried in the desert in the middle of the night. However, it has now been revealed that Fuel Entertainment secured the exclusive rights to excavate the Atari landfill and came to Xbox to film this documentary
Microsoft say the episode will ‘document the excavation’ but also discuss the ‘urban legend of the burial in the context of the precipitous rise and fall of Atari itself.’
I’m honestly looking forward to this, as I’m sure many nostalgic gamers are.
Filming begins in January. No word on when we can expect to see the finished product.