ANGRY BIRDS FRANCHISE

'Angry Birds' Spreads Wings

By NICK WINGFIELD

The 'Angry Birds' mobile app is branching out into books, movies and toys.

"Angry Birds" is flapping from touch screens to big screens, books and toys, testing whether one of the best-known mobile apps can become an entertainment franchise akin to Mickey Mouse and Iron Man.

Finland's Rovio Entertainment Ltd., the game's developer, this month will publish the first in a line of books, "Bad Piggies Egg Recipes," with such fare as egg-salad sandwiches and egg sushi. The title refers to the game's porcine thieves, who become targets for an enraged group of birds after stealing their eggs.

Next up: Angry Birds in the classroom. Rovio plans to publish a line of educational books for children ages four to their teens. Embracing the Finnish education system—which emphasizes play in learning—they're also designed as a counterpoint to the strict "Tiger Mom" approach to child rearing, says Wibe Wagemans, a Rovio branding executive.

He says one of the books will illustrate geometry lessons by launching a bird character through the air, the basic concept behind the popular "Angry Birds" video game.

"Right now it's up to us, with basic brand management, to keep the brand alive, keep it cool and delight our fans with new things," says Mr. Wagemans. He recently joined Rovio after a stint at Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine.

Rovio also recently hired David Maisel, the former chairman of Marvel Studios, to advise the Finnish company on its entertainment strategy.

Mr. Maisel says he is talking to potential writers, directors and financing partners about getting an "Angry Birds" feature film off the ground. He says it would be "premature" to talk about the budget for the movie, which could be several years off.

Mr. Maisel, who left Marvel after the sale of its parent company to Walt Disney Co., believes an "Angry Birds" movie could appeal to a wide set of consumers.

There are now 120 million active monthly "Angry Birds" game players, the company says. To compare this to another media property, there have been more than 25 million copies sold of the best-selling console game of the past year, "Call of Duty: Black Ops."

Since Rovio first released "Angry Birds" as a game for Apple Inc.'s iPhone in late 2009, the game frequently tops the most downloaded list for that device, Apple's iPad and smartphones running Google Inc.'s Android operating system.

"Angry Birds" won fans with play that was tailor-made for touch screens. Players launch the birds from a slingshot-like mechanism, adjusting the tension and trajectory to inflict maximum damage on the pigs and their ramshackle quarters. The appeal of the bloodless battles, squawking birds and grunting pigs, seem to transcend age.

"The vast numbers, diversity and global reach of the installed base of people playing the games are bigger than anything I've seen in terms of branded intellectual property for a film," Mr. Maisel says.

Rovio's first big foray outside of games was plush toys. It bolstered the idea of pushing further into other forms of entertainment. Rovio now sells about one million of the furry birds and pigs a month, which run $13 and higher.

The company also created a popular version of the "Angry Birds" game using characters from "Rio," an animated movie from News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox. (News Corp. also owns The Wall Street Journal.)

But Rovio's next moves are no sure bet. The "Angry Birds" game -- with its sometimes monotonous launching of slingshot birds -- seems to provide a thin source of creative material for deeper storytelling.

And the track record of videogames being transformed into movies isn't good, with a long list of films, such as "Doom," flopping commercially. Some notable attempts to turn superhero characters, including the Hulk and the Green Lantern, into movie franchises have also fallen short at the box office of late.

This shouldn't stop "Angry Birds," says Jeff Gomez, the chief executive of Starlight Runner Entertainment Inc. He points to Disney's "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, which were based on little more than a theme-park ride.

"If they line up that kind of talent behind 'Angry Birds,' they have a chance," says Mr. Gomez, a consultant to Disney on "Pirates of the Caribbean" projects.

Big money is also lining up behind Roxio. The company raised $42 million this year from Accel Partners Ltd., a venture-capital firm known for investments in Facebook Inc.; and Atomico Ventures, the venture-capital firm created by Skype Ltd. co-founder Niklas Zennstrom.

Rovio's revenue this year is expected to exceed $100 million, according to a person familiar with the company.

Rovio in June paid an undisclosed amount for Finnish animation studio Kombo to create "Angry Birds" short films. And to distance itself from its techie roots, the app developer recently changed its formal name to Rovio Entertainment from Rovio Mobile.

Other app makers with big audiences also are making the leap. Outfit7 Ltd. recently signed a deal with the William Morris Endeavor Entertainment LLC talent agency to expand the "Talking Friends" series into film, television and books.

The game developer cut a deal with Beanstalk Group LLC to handle licensing for toys, clothing and books for this holiday season.

Outfit7's apps, including "Talking Gina the Giraffe," feature creatures that respond to touch-screen belly rubs and repeat the player's spoken words in funny voice.

One of Rovio's assets in its expansion are the people who play its games each month. When players of "Angry Birds" pause the game, they now get an advertisement with a link to preorder the cookbook.

Mr. Maisel says that will be a powerful tool for getting people to see an "Angry Birds" movie. "We can talk to customers, something I could never do in film."

ACTORS IN DANGER

Bizzers dropping like flies

Tolan's bare dare; McGowan bears up

By Jenny Peters

You never know what to expect when Peter Tolan is in the house. The "Rescue Me" co-creator/exec producer was feeling sorry for the scribes who were forced to camp out for two weeks at the Beverly Hilton to cover the Television Critics Assn. summer press tour -- with the added torture of having to screen innumerable pilots. So to liven things up on Saturday, the third-to-last day of the tour, Tolan dropped his pants during the sesh on FX's "Rescue Me." Prior to exposing his bikini briefs to shocked onlookers, Tolan instructed: "Hey, you want to put tragedy in perspective? There's 9/11 and then there's the fact that you all have had to watch everything on television."

Being an actor is a dangerous business. Just ask Rose McGowan, who stars in the "Conan the Barbarian" reboot that opens Aug. 19. It's her first film in years, despite the fact that at Comic-Con 2008 she was touted as the star of Simon West's planned 2009 return to the "Red Sonja" tale. That one went by the wayside when McGowan trashed herself on the set of "Planet Terror."

"Look at my elbow," she said at the L.A. press junket for "Conan." "I've had three surgeries on it and have had part of it taken out. That was from a stunt gone wrong, where I did a handspring backwards. So, during the course of that year it became basically paralyzed except for half of two of my fingers. After three surgeries with massive nerve damage and the bone being taken out and a year of rehab, they're like, 'You could go do a sword movie, but we can't do anything more with your arm if you hurt it.' As dope as it would've been, I would really rather not go through life with one arm that's paralyzed and in constant pain."

And that's not even the end of it. When McGowan was finally ready to return to the job, she got injured yet again. She made it through "Conan" unscathed, but not for long.

"I have two torn ligaments in my ankle from 'Rosewood Lane,' the Victor Salva movie I just did. I have a rotator cuff tear from a movie that I did in Romania. A torn back from a movie that I did about the IRA in Belfast.My right leg is the only uninjured part. Then the other day, well, six weeks ago, I put my hand through a window by accident and hit an artery. I'm a hot mess."

But apparently McGowan just can't help herself. She's scheduled to star in Clark Johnson's film "Fortune" and is rumored to be the lead in Killer Films' planned adaptation of "The Bell Jar." But the 37-year-old thesp said she may decide to protect herself from the dangers of moviemaking at some point soon.

"I still want to be a forensic pathologist," she admitted.

WHAT WOMEN WANT

TV for women at a crossroads

Shifting landscape plagues programmers

By Brian Lowry

What do women want? Lord knows I'm the wrong person to ask, but from a TV standpoint, anyway, the answer to that question appears in an inordinate state of flux.

Television for women is a strange term for starters, since the vast majority of primetime TV aims squarely at them. Nevertheless, traditional formats, personalities and niche channels geared to women find themselves at a perplexing crossroads.

Women still watch considerably more television than men -- by almost 16 hours per month, according to the latest Nielsen Cross-Platform Report. Yet how they allocate video time keeps shifting, as the daytime soap opera -- a genre more uniquely linked to women than perhaps any other -- is slowly disappearing, just as the made-for-TV movie has been seriously diminished.

Meanwhile, some of TV's biggest names associated with women -- including Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart -- have exhibited surprising vulnerability, whether in the moribund beginning for Winfrey's cable network, OWN, or Stewart's lackluster results on Hallmark.

In short, if women were once deemed at least moderately predictable in media-buying circles, it's hard to find a sure thing anymore whether the discussion revolves around major brands or venerable genres.

Part of this has to do with the homogenizing pursuit of younger demographics -- namely, adult women under 50 -- and their evolving profile and preferences. That includes a generation of millennials weaned on reality TV and adept at suspending disbelief long enough to consume unscripted fare as if it were a soap or romantic comedy, no matter how much staging is involved.

No wonder those cable networks purporting to be "for women" currently look a trifle schizophrenic and confused.

Lifetime clearly feels pressure to get younger, but it's hard to discern a coherent strategy in the channel's current programming mix beyond the flimsy glue of women usually occupying centerstage.

Boiled down to stereotypes, Oxygen would be the home of young and likely inebriated women, while TLC caters to those with a fascination for the British royal family, people who have children in litters or the bizarre. (See their just-announced special about end-of-days believers, "Livin' for the Apocalypse.")

By contrast, Bravo possesses a cleverly articulated, media-savvy persona -- playing to upscale women and their gay pals, usually in fabulous, high-stress surroundings. Yet even that network has recycled its formula to the point of potentially depleting the supply, much less the reality, of "Real Housewives."

Finally, OWN is positioning itself as the study guide for Winfrey's "Live your best life" philosophy. At the TV Critics Assn. tour, the retired host/full-time mogul spoke about using the channel to create "the world's biggest classroom." While it's fine to uplift and educate, that description sounds like something you'd watch to avoid attending traffic school.

All these channels are bookended by a junior demographic swatch extending from teens through young women (Disney Channel, ABC Family, MTV) and an AARP tier frequented by their moms and grandmothers, who are still happy to sit through a Hallmark movie or, for that matter, network series like "Dancing With the Stars," "Blue Bloods" and "Harry's Law."

Viewed this way, the notion of structuring networks under the umbrella "women" seems increasingly flawed, as are most attempts to design TV options around such broad categories in today's wildly fragmented marketplace. (Notably, younger men are perceived to be such Neanderthals that beyond football, whatever else is on ESPN or raunchy comedy, they merit dwindling episodic consideration.)

Channels catering to women are thus left chasing hits while their old comfort zones keep moving: It's difficult to speak of "women" in a collective sense when the world has splintered into little pockets with compatible backgrounds or like-minded interests -- like the ones who periodically band together and see "Sex and the City" movies, no matter how bad they are.

Given the central role women play throughout TV's ecosystem, programmers and producers no doubt wish they could peer into their minds, sort of like Mel Gibson in that movie, but the cacophony of variety would likely be overwhelming.

Barring that, the best advice is to cue the theme from "The Young and the Restless," then use it as background music while outdated assumptions pirouette into the sunset.