On February 10 2017, audiences around the world will be sitting down in cinemas to watch the much anticipated LEGO: Batman movie. 48 days later, Australians can do the same. Village Roadshow is repeating history, making the same mistake it made with The LEGO Movie. A five million dollar mistake. A mistake co-CEO Graham Burke said the distributor would not be making again. @BrickingAround LEGO Batman will be released in Australia on 30th March, 2017. — Roadshow Films (@RoadshowFilms) December 5, 2016 Piracy of The LEGO Movie cost Village Roadshow "somewhere between $3.5 and $5 million in sales" Burke revealed at a government-led Copyright Forum back in September 2014. "We made one hell of a mistake with LEGO," Burke said of the decision to delay The LEGO Movie's release in Australia by 54 days. "We'll now make all our movies day in date with the US. I know 20th Century Fox are and Universal are too." Adding insult to injury both films were created here by Animal Logic, and the CEO Zareh Nalbandian has spoken out about piracy in the past, expressing a wish to teach kids about the impacts of piracy on creators before they become teenagers and stop caring.
So why, two years later, is this happening again? Expect to hear reasons like "school holidays" and "maximising audiences" being floated, but we've reached out to Village Roadshow for an official comment.Warner Bros. Interactive has delayed “: Arkham Knight,” moving Rocksteady Studios’ final installment of its “Arkham” franchise from October to an undetermined date in 2015. But the gamemaker won’t be left without a Batman game this fall, considering it has “Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham” scheduled from TT Games. The Lego videogame franchise has sold more than 100 million units worldwide. In “Lego Batman 3” (see below), Batman joins forces with the super heroes of the DC Comics Universe and blasts off to outer space to stop the evil Brainiac from destroying Earth. Players will unlock more than 150 unique characters from the DC Comics universe, including members of the Justice League and villains Killer Croc and Solomon Grundy. Game also will allow players to explore iconic locations such as the Hall of Justice, the Batcave and the Justice League Watchtower.
In “Arkham Knight” (see above), Rocksteady is expanding Gotham City, and improving the visuals to benefit from the power of next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft. The game will also feature more gadgets and let players drive the Batmobile, largely missing from previous installments. Warner Bros. launched the “Arkham” franchise with “Batman: Arkham Asylum” in 2009, followed by “Batman: Arkham City,” in 2011, and were notable for their dark, gritty approach to the DC character, offering those games to an older audience than the more family friendly Lego titles. “Arkham Knight” is the latest high-profile title to get bumped into 2015, joining Sony’s “The Order: 1886,” Ubisoft’s “The Division,” “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt,” “Quantum Break,” “Dying Light” and “Mad Max.” The move will free up the spotlight for Activision’s “Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare” and “Destiny,” out this fall."Awesome takes time," the ever-ebullient Dax Ginn recently told a group of reporters in explaining why his studio's new Batman game, the first from Rocksteady since 2011, is no longer scheduled for a late-2014 release.
If this news sounds a wee bit familiar, it's because a whole bunch of games seem to be slipping to 2015. The Witcher 3 just did. Even Valve's Steam Machines seem to be slipping. In an era of annual Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed games, this might seem a bit weird, but those mega-franchises tend to rotate development studios, a change even the Arkham games appeared to switch to to enable a 2013 release of the WB Montreal-developed Batman: Arkham Origins.We at Kotaku first saw Arkham Knight running in March. The game is set in a big open-world swath of Gotham City. The game's creators, playing on a PC build, appeared to be able to glide and drive through large sections of it at will. There were framerate hitches, which is common in unfinished games. Those seemed to be getting resolved when we saw the game again in May. But Rocksteady apparently needs more time. "Now Batman: Arkham Knight is totally awesome," Ginn told us in May, under embargo. "The thing about awesome, though, is awesome takes time.
And totally awesome takes a lot of time. So in collaboration with our colleagues at Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment and DC Comics, we have decided to extend the development time of Batman: Arkham Knight. Now, the very simple reason for doing this is to ensure we are delivering the awesome level of quality that Batman fans and gamers expect from this, the final episode and the epic conclusion to the Rocksteady Arkham trilogy. The Dark Knight will face his ultimate challenge in Batman: Arkham Knight now to be released in 2015." Arkham Knight wasn't just one of the biggest games planned for the fall of 2014. It was also one of the first major third-party games to be announced to be only shipping for new-gen hardware. Just PS4, Xbox One and PC.For those dying for a Batman game this year, Lego Batman 3 is still slated for a fall release. Sorry, folks, but 2015 is the new 2014. You'll have to tide yourself over with a smaller slate of games this fall than expected. Hopefully there'll be some greats in the mix.
And hopefully all these delays make the delayed games awesomer. or find him on Twitter @stephentotilo.VideoImageWatch the trailer for the Lego Batman movie. IT APPEARS that even a $5 million mistake wasn’t enough to make Village Roadshow reconsider its global release date for films. In 2014, Australian audiences got a cinematic release of The Lego Movie 54 days after it had screened in the US.Aussies decided they didn’t want to wait almost two months to see the film, so they turned to piracy — a common practice for most delayed content.With The Lego Movie on course to become the most pirated release of 2014, Village Roadshow chief executive Graham Burke acknowledged the costly mistake.“We estimate that (piracy of) The Lego Movie cost somewhere between $3.5 million and $5 million in sales,” he said, reportedThe Australian.“It was doubly painful because Lego was produced in Australia. Piracy not only impacts profits, but if unchecked will impede new business models and growth.”