SCI FI PI

Watchmen and 300 director Zack Snyder is working with Australian special effects studio Animal Logic on an animated adaptation of Kathryn Lasky's best selling children's fantasy series, Guardians of Ga'Hoole, which is centred on a band of owls on a post-apocalyptic Earth.

Snyder has also teamed up with Electronic Arts to create three new video games.

The new games will be produced at EA's Los Angeles facility, with EA owning the intellectual properties of any films made from them.

However, if EA decide to adapt them for cinema audiences, the movies will be produced by Snyder's own company, Cruel & Unusual Films.



The Night Owl will soon be replaced by a family of animated owls.


"Zack Snyder has a fresh and bold creative style that resonates with our core audience," EA Games label president Frank Gibeau said in a press release announcing the move.

Snyder is the second Hollywood director to sign on with EA to make games. Steven Spielberg also agreed to a three-game contract. The first fruit of that partnership, "Boom Blox," was released in May and sold more than 450,000 units.

At 42, Snyder is among a new generation of Hollywood elite who grew up with video games. So it's inevitable that some see creative cross-fertilization between the two art forms. Another director, Gore Verbinski, said earlier this year that he was exploring an undisclosed game project. In the meantime, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" director has agreed to direct the movie adaptation of the sci-fi shooter game "BioShock."

"I think video games are cool because they offer an opportunity to tell a story in an entirely unique way," Snyder said in a statement.