Transformers producer Tom DeSanto has reportedly bought the movie & TV rights to the popular MMO title.
As I told Toaster/Culex last night, this fills me with foreboding. I have to wonder if they mean to use some of the signature characters, or if they’re going to create new ones. The Freedom Phalanx is pretty dysfunctional and rather jerkish, even for modern-age heroes, and it looks like the Vanguard (the main anti-Rikti group in the canon) is being set up as an antagonistic group down the line.
On the other hand, the idea of a series offers lots of potential for interesting tie-ins, and they have a virtually unlimited supply of characters, both heroic and villainous, to draw on–the terms of the EULA mean that they own the rights to all the player characters, although they’d probably ask nicely, anyway. I doubt most people would object to their character having a cameo in a TV show.
“Buying the rights” is meaningless. Less than 1% of what gets optioned are actually made into movies. When they start shooting is the time to start thinking that it will really come out.