Spore evolving into movies and TV

Now that Electronic Arts has signed on with top Hollywood representatives United Talent Agency, it's a safe bet that the megapublisher is sizing up all of its properties for their silver-screen suitability. And if EA Maxis co-founder Will Wright has his way, one of the next games to make that conversion is his studio's hotly anticipated evolution simulation, Spore.

"With Spore, we're looking way outside the game space, such as TV, movies, etc," Wright told Reuters. "We're basically planting the seeds to spread Spore out to a much wider group of people than would ever play a computer game."

Assuming that Spore germinates in Tinsel Town, Wright's latest game would be the second from the celebrated designer to be destined for celluloid. In 2007, 20th Century Fox picked up the rights to make a film based on EA's massively popular Sims franchise, the first instalment of which Wright created in 2000. Although details on The Sims are sparse, it will reportedly be a live-action film, produced by John Davis (Predator, Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties) and written by Brian Lynch (who is also working on the Shrek spin-off, Puss in Boots).

"We're going to be much more intelligent about harvesting other market opportunities for Spore than we were with The Sims, which as big as it was in the game space, pretty much remains in the game space," commented Wright.

Released in July for mobile phones, Spore is expected to ship for the PC, Mac and Nintendo DS on 5 September in Europe, with the North American release following two days later. An as-yet-undated Wii version is also in development, and EA has indicated that the game may surface on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in the future.