Annapurna’s entire Interactive team has collectively resigned from the company after negotiations to split the division off fell through.
This games and interactive publishing arm of the movie distribution company was negotiating to make the Interactive division a separate entity from the main company. Until this week, negotiations were happening primarily through Annapurna owner Megan Ellison, a Hollywood producer and daughter of a billionaire with Producer or Executive Producer titles for such movies as Her, Zero Dark Thirty, House of Gucci, Hustlers and The Phantom Thread.
When Ellison walked from the talks, so did the negotiating team and the rest of the staffers—with the interactive media group entirely resigning, including its executives, according to the report from Bloomberg.
“All 25 members of the Annapurna Interactive team collectively resigned,’’ said now-former Annapurna Interactive President Nathan Gary, one of its original founders, and the other staffers in a joint statement to Bloomberg. “This was one of the hardest decisions we have ever had to make and we did not take this action lightly.”
This was confirmed by an Annapurna spokesperson to Bloomberg. The spokesperson explained that the company will continue not only supporting “our existing slate of games but also expanding our presence in the interactive space as we continue to look for opportunities to take a more integrated approach to linear and interactive storytelling across film and TV, gaming, and theater.”
Annapurna Interactive was a wellspring in the late 2010s and this decade for supporting memorable small indie hits. Its most famous are likely What Remains of Edith Finch, the critically-acclaimed narrative feature, and Stray, the viral adventure game about a cat in a robotic cyberpunk world, as well as Outer Wilds, Kentucky Route Zero, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Telling Lies, Donut County, and the celebrity-studded mystery Twelve Minutes.
Annapurna also has ongoing deals with Remedy Entertainment to make shows out of Control and Alan Wake, though a Remedy Communications Director announced on X that these won’t be affected by the walkouts.
