Ubisoft to adapt Sony's first animated films

Ubisoft is set to make games out of Sony Pictures' first attempts at feature-length animated films as part of a long-term collaboration deal with Sony Pictures Animation, the French publisher revealed this week.

Open Season and Surf's Up will be Ubi's first CGI film adaptations. Open Season and its accompanying game will be out on 29th September 2006, while Surf's Up will take a bit longer to turn up - it's due out in summer 2007. Ubisoft Montreal is handling both properties.

Since you ask, Open Season is about a grizzly bear and a wild mule deer, voiced by Martin Lawrence and Ashton Kutcher respectively, who find themselves relocated to the wild three days before hunting season, while Surf's Up is a "mockumentary" based on the idea that surfing was invented by penguins.

Oh, and for those of you wondering why Ubisoft is making games out of Sony films instead of Sony Computer Entertainment, it's worth mentioning that Sony is a complex web of companies within companies, some of which don't seem to get on with one another or seek each other's help. The European and American arms of Sony Computer Entertainment, for example, are infamous for the strained nature of their relationship, and just last week Sony Music said Sony Pictures' Mum was a slag. Ubisoft, meanwhile, has previously collaborated to publish the likes of Champions of Norrath and distribute EverQuest in Europe for Sony Online Entertainment, so it all kind of makes sense in an incestuous way.