Ubisoft to publish King Kong game

Ubisoft in the US has confirmed that it will publish a game based on Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson's forthcoming King Kong film project. Very little is known about the game, which is scheduled for release next year alongside the film, but some reports speculate that Jackson himself will have a certain amount of control.

News of the King Kong game began life in a New York Times Magazine article at the weekend profiling the relationship between games and film - presumably prompted by last week's revelation that John Woo has bought the rights to Metroid. The article speculated that Peter Jackson might pocket more from the game version of King Kong than the film itself, prompting a lot of head-scratching and then frantic phone calls to Ubisoft, the publisher mentioned in the text.

Of course, the fact that Ubisoft has secured a King Kong spin-off game is yet another example of the French firm's recent genuine growth. The publisher has a number of critical smash hits under its belt, and now it's grabbing potentially massive film franchises from under the noses of the likes of Electronic Arts and Vivendi-Universal Games (who must be a bit miffed, given that former colleagues Universal Films are in charge of the big-screen ape odyssey).