SEGA Partners with Pyro Studios

[keithlewis]

LONDON & SAN FRANCISCO (February 25, 2009) -- SEGA® Europe, Ltd., SEGA® of America, Inc., and Madrid-based Pyro Studios® today announced a partnership to create a game based on its upcoming animated film, Planet 51. The Planet 51 game will be available in Winter 2009 for the Xbox 360®video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the Wii™ system, PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system and the Nintendo DS™ portable handheld system.

Planet 51 is a galactic sized alien adventure comedy from the writer of "Shrek" and "Shrek 2", which revolves around American astronaut Captain Charles "Chuck" Baker who lands on Planet 51, thinking he's the first person to step foot on it. To his surprise, he finds that this planet is inhabited by little green people who are happily living in a white picket fence world reminiscent of a cheerfully innocent American town circa 1950, and whose only fear is that it will be overrun by alien invaders...like Chuck! With the help of his robot companion "Rover" and his new friend Lem, Chuck must navigate his way through the dazzling, but bewildering, landscape of Planet 51 in order to escape becoming a permanent part of the Planet 51 Alien Invaders Space Museum.

Planet 51, is scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on November 20, 2009 by Sony Pictures Releasing, and around the world by leading independent distributors.

“We are delighted to have SEGA on board,” commented Ignacio Perez Dolset , CEO of Pyro Studios and Ilion Animation Studios. “Pyro strives to produce high quality games and we are pleased to have the right partner for worldwide publishing. Sega´s expertise in the video games industry, together with the quality of the game will make Planet 51 a Thanksgiving blockbuster”.

“SEGA is very excited about our new partnership with Pyro Studios,” said Sean Ratcliffe, Vice President of Marketing, SEGA of America, Inc. “Pyro Studio's exceptional pedigree, combined with the fantastic story of Planet 51 allows this project to appeal to a global audience of all ages.”

The Planet 51 game will take the form of an entertaining mission-based driving game, with various characters from the film available to play. The game allows audiences to immerse themselves into this amazing vibrant world and truly experience the hours of fun that Planet 51 has to offer!

This partnership demonstrates SEGA’s strategy to strengthen its portfolio of games based on movie licenses. SEGA have previously partnered with Marvel Studios to create games for a number of their popular long running comic series, this includes the recently released, and hugely successful Iron Man™ film. Pyro Studios have previously worked on the highly acclaimed Commandos line of WWII games. Planet 51 will be Pyro Studios’ first exploration into the movie genre.