Amy Hennig
Image: USgamer

Amy Hennig is best known for spearheading the creation of Uncharted at Naughty Dog, but her career seemed unclear after her Star Wars project at Visceral Games was cancelled. However, it's now been announced the writer/director has been scooped up by Skydance Media, an entertainment company most famous for its Hollywood blockbusters like Mission Impossible: Fallout and Annihilation. Hennig joins the company, along with EA alumnus Julian Beak, to help the movie studio branch out into the games industry.

As you might expect from the woman behind Nathan Drake and the Legacy of Kain series, the new development team will focus on story-driven titles, with "state-of-the-art computer graphics to provide the visual fidelity of television and film".

David Ellison, CEO of Skydance, seems excited to be expanding his company into games: "The interactive media landscape is continually changing and Amy and Julian are creative and visionary leaders of this evolution,” he said. “Together, we will create within this new sphere the same type of event-level entertainment experiences that Skydance is known for in features and television."

Hennig and Beak are now hiring for this new game studio, but it sounds like they want to keep it a relatively small operation. It also seems the size of the team's games will be relatively small, as Hennig wants to create "shorter form, focused, narrative interactive content" -- something she feels under-represented in games right now.

We're looking forward to seeing what this new studio will produce. It'll probably take a while for any new projects to be formally announced, but the pedigree is strong already, so we have high hopes for this new venture. You can read more on the subject in Venture Beat's interview.

[source venturebeat.com]