During the company's financial conference call for investors and analysts, Take-Two Interactive Entertainment president CEO Strauss Zelnick was asked about the possibility to expand the company's IP into movies or TV Series.
The question was asked by an analyst who brought up the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie and The Last of Us TV series, Zelnick responded without much enthusiasm to the idea.
He mentioned that he believes these are economically a relatively small opportunity and explained that the company isn't going to invest its own money in that kind of enterprise while remaining very selective about IP that it may license to other entities for that purpose.
We think it's probably a relatively small opportunity, economically. We're not going to use our balance sheet to invest in film and television projects.
Those are typically very challenged asset classes with which I'm quite familiar. And in pointing out two successes, notable as they may be, lies the fact that there are many, many failures where money was lost.
So so far we've taken a very selective approach to licensing. We do have a Borderlands movie coming from Lionsgate and we have a Bioshock movie coming as well.
We're excited about both and selectively we could see licensing in the future when there's a creative imperative and an economic opportunity.
I think you're right. The reason there's been success lately is because you had great IP and then there was a great project that was made from it. And the reason you've had failure in the past is that the expression of the IP just wasn't very good, despite people's best efforts.
It's a really hard business, and we're not going to bet this company's future or the value of our intellectual property based on someone else's execution in another area of the entertainment business.
So, we'll continue to be very selective indeed. Even if we did take a broad-based approach in the absence of investing ourselves, the economic opportunity in the context of the much greater economic opportunity for our core business is limited.
It's worth mentioning that before moving to the gaming industry, Zelnick worked at Columbia Pictures International Television and Vestron, so he knows the linear entertainment business quite well, as he mentioned above.
If you'd like to read more about Take-Two's financial performance, you can read our dedicated article published earlier today.