How Hollywood tackles VR: Lionsgate, Starbreeze, and WEVR collaborate

Today Starbreeze (Payday franchise) and film studio Lionsgate announced a VR project based on the 2014 Keanu Reeves film "John Wick," and its late-2016 sequel. The VR game, a first person shooter, is due to be released early  next year.

The project offers a glimpse of how the mainstream media industry is going to tackle the incipient release of VR headsets from Oculus, Sony, and HTC: Build on existing properties and work with partners to bring it all together.

Starbreeze also plans to integrate John Wick content into its popular Payday franchise, which is, in general, a big part of the studio's future plans.

The John Wick VR game is developed by mobile studio Grab Games in partnership with WEVR -- a VR-focused startup Valve-partnered Vive VR headset manufacturer HTC recently invested $10 million in.

Starbreeze, for its part, will be publishing the game on behalf of Lionsgate. No word on whether the game will support its upcoming StarVR headset.

Lionsgate announced plans to get into games last year, forming an interactive division; it made a big deal with The Walking Dead dev Telltale Games this year for a series of "Super Shows" which bring together games and television.