When you put two forward-thinking people together like Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of Dreamworks Animation SKG, and reality TV producer Mark Burnett of Mark Burnett Productions (MBP), Los Angeles, you get one revolutionary online game concept like the “Flushed Away Underground Adventure,” which began earlier this month.
The adventure, which involves a series of 24 games, is available for free exclusively on AOL at www.aol.com/flushedawaygame and offers online challenges featuring different characters, storylines and settings from the film Flushed Away, which will be released nationwide Nov. 3.
Following the launch of AOL’s and Burnett’s Gold Rush, an online series of contests with more than $2 million in prizes at stake, a conversation ensued between Burnett and Katzenberg.
“Jeff said, ‘You guys created this incredible piece of content with no characters, no environment, everything from scratch. What could you do if I gave you a rich universe of characters and themes and environments to do something with online content?'” explained MBP’s Roy Bank, co-executive producer of “Flushed Away Underground Adventure.”
So Katzenberg showed the team at MBP his movie Flushed Away. The comedy is set on and beneath the streets of London, where we meet Roddy St. James (Hugh Jackman), a pampered pet mouse who thinks he’s got it made. But when a sewer rat named Sid (Shane Richie) — the definition of “low life”–comes spewing out of the sink and decides it’s his turn to enjoy the lap of luxury, Roddy schemes to rid himself of the pest by luring him into the loo for a dip in the “whirlpool.” Roddy’s plan backfires when he inadvertently winds up being the one flushed away into the bustling world down below.
Underground, Roddy discovers a vast metropolis where he meets Rita (Kate Winslet), a street-wise rat who is on a mission of her own. If Roddy is going to get home, he and Rita will need to escape the clutches of the villainous Toad (Sir Ian McKellen). Toad, who royally despises all rodents, dispatches two hapless henchrats, Spike (Andy Serkis) and Whitey (Bill Nighy), as well as his cousin — that dreaded mercenary, Le Frog (Jean Reno) — to see that Roddy and Rita are iced– literally.
But Katzenberg didn’t want MBP to think of the project as a movie promotion.
Bank said of Katzenberg, “His mantra, which is so important and needs to be noted because he’s so smart and forward thinking, was ‘No matter what you do, this needs to be interesting and entertaining standalone content.’ He said if it’s standalone, entertaining content that has its own compelling factors–prizes, games that are sticky and fun–by the definition of what it is, it will promote the movie because people will get immersed in the characters, in the themes, in the potty humor that is the basis of Flushed Away.”
Katzenberg also did something that was unheard of when he posed the challenge to MBP. He offered the production company the ability to have his animators create unique, custom, animated sequences as part of the game.
“So when you have Roddy and Sid telling you how the adventure works,” that was not created by a couple of Web designers using characters, that was created by Dreamworks’ animators, the same people who made the movie. We had access to their animators, storytellers, voiceover artists and their actors,” explained Bank.
“It’s unheard of and it’s testament to the power and passion of two people like Jeffrey and Mark being able to, from the top down, make this a priority initiative.” MBP was up for the challenge. Games like Fly Catcher, Belched Away and Meet Your Icemaker are addicting for kids and parents. In Fly Catcher, players have to help Le Frog and his henchfrogs eat as many flies as possible before the flies zip them up. In Meet Your Icemaker, users have to race against the clock to free Roddy’s mates who have been frozen in an icebox by the Toad. In Belched Away, Sid’s belching power is used to keep slugs in the air and out of his food.
Players are rewarded with digital prizes (screensavers, buddy icons, music) as they move closer to qualifying for the grand prize sweepstakes. Each time a player completes a game, he or she is allowed to pop a certain number of bubbles in the Think Tank.
Each popped bubble leads players closer to a final clue and a chance to win the sweepstakes, which includes Hawaiian family vacations, plasma TVs and “Flushed Away” video games.
Given the rich environment and knowledge of what games work online already, this project wasn’t as hard as you would think, according to Bank, adding that they couldn’t have done it without Web building firm Click Media.
“Games like Meet Your Ice Maker come from a rich steep tradition of games like Tetris. Games like Fly Catcher come from a rich tradition of games like Missile Command. They are not copies of games, but inspired by traditions of other games,” Bank said.
“We took what’s been working for 30 years in video gaming and applied those principles because that’s what still works. All the fancy XBOX games in the world don’t add up to a good old-fashioned game of Tetris.”
In creating the content, they were also careful to integrate sponsors AMD, Kohl’s and Sara Lee into the games in a natural, organic way that fits the brand and is not exploitative to the players.
“Kids will call you on that. It’s incredible how savvy they are. You don’t want to try and trick them because you won’t get away with it,” Bank said.
Furthermore, being able to create a kid-friendly, family-friendly online adventure without having to worry that something bad is going to pop up was very rewarding for MBP as a company.
“Mark is a family man. He instills those types of values into the company, the way he runs it and the initiatives we take,” commented Bank, adding that to test the fun factor of the games, “We sent them home to Mark’s kids.”
Ang Lee To Receive ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year Award From American Cinema Editors
American Cinema Editors (ACE) has named two-time Oscar®-winning filmmaker Ang Lee as recipient of the ACE Golden Eddie Filmmaker of the Year award. He will be presented with the honor at the 76th Annual ACE Eddie Awards taking place Friday, February 27, at UCLA’s Royce Hall, where winners will also be announced in 14 competitive categories recognizing the best film editing achievements of the year in film and television. Kim Larson, managing director and head of YouTube’s Creator and Gaming team, will be accepting YouTube’s previously announced ACE Visionary Award, and Emmy winning editor/director Arthur Forney, ACE, and Oscar® nominated editor Robert Leighton will receive ACE Career Achievement awards. Lee joins a group of Golden Eddie award recipients including Jon M. Chu, John Waters, Gina Prince-Bythewood, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Kathleen Kennedy, Christopher Nolan, Lauren Shuler Donner, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Spielberg, Vince Gilligan, Alexander Payne, J.J. Abrams, Nancy Meyers, Martin Scorsese, Norman Jewison, Robert Zemeckis, George Lucas, and the Sundance Institute. “Ang Lee’s exploration of our most closely held emotions has ignited an international passion for cinema for over 30 years”, said ACE president Sabrina Plisco, ACE. “The breadth of his filmography is unparalleled, ranging from the intimate and boundary-breaking romance of Brokeback Mountain, to the epic drama of Life of Pi and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, to even the pre-MCU Marvel film Hulk.” This year’s ACE Visionary Award recognizes Larson and YouTube’s profound impact on visual storytelling as a whole, the importance of digital content and spaces in the evolving media landscape, and ACE’s ongoing work to support... Read More