Animated Feature Film & In-Game Season

Thatgamecompany decided to expand Sky into a full-length animated feature film. Not a promotional video. Not a cutscene. A real film, with theatrical releases in Japan, Los Angeles, and eight regions of China — and a simultaneous in-game premiere for millions of players worldwide. There was no playbook for this.

My role spanned four distinct functions that don't typically sit with one person: creative direction of all promotional materials, narrative strategy and messaging, in-game cinema operations, and distribution coordination across three theatrical markets with completely different release windows and audience expectations.

I directed every brand-facing element: the movie poster, theatrical and in-game trailers, teasers, social content, a longform documentary series about the making of the animation, and director's cut extended materials for theatrical runs. I also wrote the interstitial narration cards inside the film itself — the text that appears between scenes — which required understanding the film's emotional architecture well enough to write in its voice rather than a marketing voice.

The narrative strategy produced a full show bible: plot breakdown, character summaries, region-specific PR messaging, and internal guidelines for how to talk about the film across markets. Japan required maximum exposure ahead of its theatrical window. China's market had to be protected ahead of the 2027 full dual-part release. Coordinating those timelines without letting one market's announcement undermine the other required sequencing every communication carefully.

The in-game cinema operations were a category of work that didn't exist before this project: programming the viewing schedule, managing the communal premiere experience for millions of simultaneous players, and running an IP protection operation to monitor and execute takedowns of unauthorized recordings as they appeared.

A game studio had decided to produce its first animated feature film with theatrical releases across three international markets and a simultaneous in-game premiere. No precedent existed for how to market, distribute, and protect a film that lived simultaneously inside a game and in physical theaters — with regional release timelines that had to be coordinated without each market's announcement undermining the others.

I built four parallel workstreams that don't normally sit with one person: creative direction of all promotional materials, narrative strategy and show bible, in-game cinema programming and operations, and IP protection. I wrote the film's internal narration cards to ensure the brand voice and the film's voice were the same thing. I sequenced regional announcements carefully to maximize Japan's theatrical window without compromising China's 2027 full release.