Nightdive seems to still be hopeful that they can someday bring back Monolith Productions’ long missed spy shooter franchise, No One Lives Forever.
Over a decade ago, the company revealed that they couldn’t figure out how to get the rights to these games and had to give up. While it’s well known that The Operative: No One Lives Forever was an original IP made by Monolith Productions, the first game was originally published by Fox Interactive on Windows in 2000. To further complicate matters, Fox sold their gaming business to Vivendi in 2008. In turn, Vivendi sold their gaming business to Activision in 2008, in the same deal that formed Activision Blizzard.
While Nightdive identified these potential rights holders, they were uncooperative in untangling who exactly owned what, so that the franchise could be revived. That’s even though the companies knew they would make some money out of it, and that Nightdive were essentially voluntarily doing the hard work for them. Eventually, it came down to Warner Bros being unwilling to work with the studio, even though they were unlikely to make a new game themselves at that time.
That takes us to today, after WB Games shut down Monolith Productions itself. In a new interview with Video Games Chronicle, Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick and director of business development Larry Kuperman revealed how Monolith’s closure affected their plans to bring the franchise back.
Kuperman started things off by saying this:
“I don’t think we really know how that’s going to shake out. I think that’s too recent an event, and I’m not sure. There’s a certain challenge to that, but again, I’m not sure how that whole thing is going to shake out at this point, and I’m still optimistic on that.”
Kick then chimed in:
“That was the word I was going to use too, because any time that there’s just a general kind of shift in the industry, it does open some windows every once in a while for that kind of stuff. So optimism is kind of where we’re at. I think that there’s at least a potential for something good to come out of that, but I don’t know. It’s too recent. I don’t want to keep on falling back on that.”
When asked if they were giving up on it, Kick replied, “Never give up. We don’t give up.”
What Kick and Kuperman are alluding to, of course, is the possibility that Warner Bros is willing to license or even sell off the IP now. As opposed to a decade ago, WB Games did recently express an interest in selling off parts of their gaming business, as well as in licensing some of their IPs. As we know, there’s been a recent changing in the guard of WB Games management as well. So it’s absolutely possible that Nightdive could work out a deal.
But then, to do so, they may still have to negotiate with Fox or the company that acquired many of Fox’s entertainment assets, Disney, on top of Activision and their current owner, Microsoft. Nightdive has demonstrated that there is money to be made in catering to gamers’ nostalgia, so we may not have to give up on this yet either. Hopefully JB Perrette is amiable to this idea when it finally reaches him.
