Sony signs multimedia rights for Afterworld

Sony Pictures Television International has acquired the rights to distribute TV, Internet, gaming and mobile content based on animated sci-fi show Afterworld.

The series was created by Brent Friedman, author of the screenplay for the second Mortal Kombat film, and producer Stan Rogow. It is set in a world where unexplained events have caused 99 per cent of the Earth's population to disappear and technology no longer works.

Hero Russell Shoemaker begins a journey from New York to Seattle in a bid to find out if his family are still alive, uncovering mysteries and meeting survivors trying to rebuild society along the way.

Afterworld already appears on online entertainment network Bud TV. Under the terms of the new deal, Sony Pictures has the right to distribute 130 episodes, each lasting two minutes, across TV, Internet and mobile platforms.

Fans will be able to view past episodes on the web, and will also have access to Afterworld-related blogs, content applications and online games. Few details of the latter have been revealed so far, but Friedman told the Hollywood Reporter, "As much as I've enjoyed working in all the conventional mediums, I believe we have created something that represents a new form of content - the online convergence of television and videogames."

Sony Pictures's Marie Jacobson told the newspaper, "Many opportunities come along with this from advertiser integration and from a versioning point of view.

"It's not about finding the consumer who will watch this on TV or on a phone or online or play it on a game. We have the opportunity with this project to lock into different subsets of consumers - we are chasing an aggregate audience."