Kiwi actors in top-selling video game

Press, 3 December 1987, Page 22

Kiwi actors in top-selling video game

PA Wellington Kiwi actors are being seen by thousands of people throughout the United states in a New Zealand-backed video game venture which is expected to bring in SUS 4 million by the end of the year. Under the direction of John Baras, Wellington actors, Gerald Bryan, John Callen, Mark Hadlow, Linda Anning and a Christchurch actor, Stuart Devenie, ail appear in the dramatised video game based on the character Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr Watson.

Devenie plays Sherlock Holmes and Gerald Bryan plays Dr Watson, while Callen plays Inspector Lestrade and Hadlow is a hotel bellman.

The 10-episode video package was filmed in Hollywood earlier this year. It is based on the 2218 Baker Street board game which has attracted more than a million sales in the United States. The New Zealander behind the video venture, American-born Mark Chambers, is a friend and business associate of the board game's creator, Mr Jay Moriarty. Mr Chambers wrote 85 of the 180 adventures in the board game. He has also written two of the 10 episodes in the video game.

His company, Sunrise Entertainment, Ltd, obtained the exclusive rights

for the wdeo game. The venture has been backed by two special partnerships underwritten and managed by the Auck-land-based merchant bankers Fay Richwhite. The game went on sale in the United States. 10 days ago and 35,000 games have been sold, with gross earning reaching about SUSIM. Mr Chambers said it was hoped to sell 100,000 games by the end of the year with gross takings of S4M. The game sells in the United States for SUS 44. There are no plans yet to sell it in New Zealand. The package cost less than SUSI million to make, and Mr Chambers said it was likely to earn more than any New Zealand feature film. The biggest feature film success in this country to date is "Footrot Flats,” which has earned $2.4 million in box office takings in New Zealand. Mr Chambers said he had originally tried putting a feature film package together in New Zealand. But the “hard reality” was in trying to get a fair deal for distribution of the product The video game was the result of a search for a different way to use New Zealand talents, he said. If his projections are right the game could bring in $2O million in sales, he said. “In film terms that's a substantial hit,” he said.