Amy Hennig, best known for her work on Naughty Dog’s Uncharted franchise, has been tapped by Skydance Media to form a new interactive media division for the company. Hennig will be joined in the new endeavor by her executive producer partner, Julian Beak.
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“The interactive media landscape is continually changing and Amy and Julian are creative and visionary leaders of this evolution.” said David Ellison, CEO of Skydance Media. “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.”
Founded in 2010, Skydance Media has been responsible for a number of film and television projects, including Terminator: Dark Fate and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan. In 2016, Skydance Interactive was launched with the purpose of creating VR games based on new and pre-existing IP, such as Archangel: Hellfire and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners.
Hennig has been a part of the video game industry since the 1980s, beginning her career as an artist and animator. Hennig’s first video game work was for an unreleased Atari game, before moving on to games for the Nintendo Entertainment System. From there, Hennig began a long career, spanning companies such as Electronic Arts and Crystal Dynamics before landing at Naughty Dog, where she served as the writer and creative director for the Uncharted franchise through 2014. In 2019, Hennig was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Game Developers Choice Awards.
“Julian and I are thrilled to be part of the Skydance creative team, and excited to partner with Skydance to explore this new frontier in entertainment while pioneering new ways to tell immersive stories through technology,” said Hennig, “Our goal is to create inviting and innovative experiences with the high production values and visual fidelity that will set the standard in this new media landscape.”
At this time, the news regarding Hennig’s new division remains vague, at best. Just how “interactive” this media will be remains to be seen. The video game industry has seen the release of a number of games over the last few years that are closer to interactive films, such as The Bunker from Wales Interactive. Perhaps this new “interactive media” venture will expand on these types of experiences for a larger audience. Given her long-standing ties to the video game industry, it will be interesting to see what type of gameplay, if any, her new division will offer consumers.
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