Conan Exiles developer Funcom is working on an all-new Conan game after acquiring full rights to the Conan the Barbarian franchise.
The Norwegian developer has announced its acquisition of Cabinet Group – along with access to its full range of intellectual properties, including Conan the Barbarian, Mutant Year Zero and Solomon Kane.
As part of the announcement, Funcom revealed that it is “currently overseeing the development of an unannounced [Conan] game which will combine many of the characters in the Robert E. Howard universe.”
Cabinet Group’s entire portfolio of pop culture IP will be incorporated into Funcom’s subsidiary Heroic Signatures.
“If you combine Funcom’s knowledge of games with Heroic Signatures’ knowledge of the TV/entertainment, publishing, and licensing industries, it makes us perfectly placed to take this venture to the next level,” said Funcom CEO Rui Casiais. “It’s exciting times ahead for us and for fans of the IPs.”
Importantly, co-founder and CEO of Cabinet Group, Frederik Malmberg, will remain onboard as president of Heroic Signatures.
“We took Cabinet Group as far as we could as an independent studio, but in order to achieve further growth, we were in need of bigger financial investments and infrastructure,” he said.
Malmberg has been personally responsible for reviving the ‘Conan’ franchise – using high value licensing deals with Penguin Random House, Panini, Titan Books, and Monolith as well as Funcom itself to broaden the reach of these pop culture icons.
Marvel Entertainment is currently publishing a weekly Conan the Barbarian comic book, while a live-action Conan TV series is ion the works at Netflix.
“The entertainment industry is rapidly becoming more ‘techified’,” said Malmberg. “We’ve seen brilliant examples of how games have incorporated IPs in innovative ways to reach audience numbers that vastly surpass previous levels. What Fortnite has done with The Avengers, for instance, or the impact a live in-game concert can have on awareness. We are looking forward to sitting down with other entertainment companies who share our vision and wish to take part in the exciting journey we have ahead.”
Elsewhere, next year’s Call of Duty game has been revealed as a sequel to Modern Warfare.
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