Convergence Culture and The Walking Dead

One of my favorite television shows right now is The Walking Dead on AMC. The show is adapted from the comic book of the same name made by creator Robert Kirkman. The comic book was first issued in 2003 and the television show followed in 2010. The TV show is based on the comic book's timeline but it is not exactly the same which keeps it more interesting for those of us who have read the comic books.

The television show and the comics have done very well. The show has been nominated for many awards and has had good ratings throughout it's three seasons on AMC. It is also the most-watched basic cable drama in the history of broadcasting.

After The Walking Dead brand branched out into television, it began to branch out into the video game market. This year, Telltale games began to release an episodic video game for The Walking Dead. In the game, the main characters are different but they live in the same zombie-infested world. The first season of video games will have five episodes to play through, with each one being released a few weeks after the other. The last episode of the first season will be out next month.
 
The video games were met with positive reviews. The first episode of The Walking Dead game sold one million copies in 20 days, making it Telltale's fastest selling game to date. This summer, Telltale revealed that a new season of The Walking Dead games will be released. 

There is another Walking Dead game that is going to be published by Activision. The game, The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, will be a prequel to the television series and will be released next year. So far, The Walking Dead brand has had great success in everything it has decided to go into.  

In other news related to last week's blog, Disney has announced that it has bought Lucasfilm for $4 Billion. They will be making Star Wars: Episode 7 and will be releasing a new episode every two to three years after that. Here is a link to that story.

http://money.msn.com/business-news/article.aspx?feed=AP&Date=20121030&ID=15733883&industry=IND_MEDIA&isub=&ocid=ansmony11

Star Wars & Media Convergence

In class we talked about The Matrix film franchise and how it is a good example of convergence culture in the media, which is defined by author Henry Jenkins as the "flow of content spread across many media platforms." After the success of the first Matrix film, two sequels were released, a comic book was launched, video games were made, and animated short films were produced. The success of the first Matrix film made it possible to expand The Matrix universe because of the popularity of the product.

Another film franchise that comes to mind when I think of convergence culture in our media is George Lucas' Star Wars. Released in 1977, this was released twenty-two years before The Matrix came out onto the scene. Out of Star Wars success came five more feature length films, comic books, books, animated TV series The Clone Wars, video games, computer games, and toys. These all comprise what is known as the Star Wars universe.

These different mediums of entertainment expand upon what was shown in the Star Wars films. They continue where the films left off and show the events that occurred before the films began. They expand the story over thousands of years.

The Star Wars franchise is valued at around $30 Billion. We can see that media convergence is good for making money. I think that Star Wars is one of the better examples of convergence in the media today.