Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, and Those About To Die) and Marco Weber (The Thirteenth Floor) are developing a live-action TV series based on the Web3 RPG game Space Nation Online.
Space Nation Inc. says in a statement: ”The series will map out the origins of the epic story that began with the recent soft launch of Space Nation Online, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) that sends players to a distant star cluster where humanity has settled following Earth’s destruction.”
The series will be developed and executive-produced by Emmerich and Weber, who also founded Space Nation along with game developers Jerome Wu and Tony Tang.
Weber says: “We want to take an approach that fits into the overall philosophy of what we’re doing with the with the game, with our economy.
“We might sell a second window to one of the streamers, but all on a licensing basis. We’re not looking for a streamer to come in and outright buy the IP. And our goal is to be able to finance a significant portion of the budget ourselves through our own economy and our own token.”
They wanted the company to focus on “first-of-its-kind transmedia IP spanning video games, online content, and TV/streaming.” They are also backed with $50 million in funding.
Emmerich said: “I came to this project through Marco and he was very excited about it, and whatever he is excited about, I’m excited about, too.
“We talked about that I have to develop my own [Web3] spaceships, etcetera, etcetera. And so there’s a possibility to buy a spaceship I designed — but it’s only one of many, many things we offer.
“What we also want to offer is a TV show. A TV show which shows the origin of this whole situation, because aliens came to Earth, destroyed Earth, and we had to go to space.”
Weber added: “One of the things that Jerome, Tony, Roland and I wanted to make sure from the beginning is that people realize this is a very solid, long-term story that we want to develop.
“That includes first the game, the platform we built, and that now, in the next step, will include some transmedia IPs that we want to develop so that all the users can see this is not like a fast money grab, where people try to launch a token promising a game and then they’re out.
“It’s quite the opposite. We’ve launched the game to the tune of a nearly $50 million investment through the management buyout and finance we raised from VCs and investors, and we still haven’t gone and launched the token or something, because we first want to stabilize the ecosystem, and that’s our main concern at this point. And we’re doing pretty well.”
Before Space Nation Online was launched, Emmerich, Weber and filmmaker Martin Weisz (The Hills Have Eyes 2) released a series of free animated shorts that focused on the character Zoey (voiced and performance captured by actress Winona Weber), an alien teen space pirate, and her ill-fated attempts to go viral online.
Space Nation Online lead writer Jess Lebow and Weber joined as co-writers. A spinoff of the shorts is also currently in development.
Source: Variety
