Two panel discussions, and the relationship between movies and videogames

Some Sunday links:

- Screenvision held a panel discussion last week about the future of movies. Executive producer Joel Stillerman predicted:

...that companies like Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central — all of which now make films — "will be more powerful than the major studios" in a few years. "They have specific expertise to develop material for an audience, and they are brilliant marketers," he said. "These brands will emerge as the pre-eminent players in the movie business." Mr. Stillerman also predicted the continuing rise of film companies like Walden Media and Participant Productions, which "make movies that are motivated by personal world views."

- Enric Teller is putting up short clips from a panel discussion held here in San Francisco last week on the "Digital Film Revolution," featuring panelists such as John Knoll (of Industrial Light & Magic), Richard Chuang (founder of PDI, now DreamWorks Animation), Stu Maschwitz from The Orphanage, and Jeff Fino from Wild Brain. Here's the introduction and here are the other clips.

- This should be obvious by now: hit movies do not always generate hit videogames. In a lengthy report on the relationship between movie studios and game-makers, the Los Angeles Times' Julie Tamaki points out that of the ten best-selling videogames of 2005, only one was based on a movie (`Revenge of the Sith').

Across the country, the NY Times quotes Vin Diesel, who thinks that the videogame version of `The Chronicles of Riddick' "has more story in it than the movie did."