The Movie Studio Update

Movie Studio: a proper passion-project-tier division

What used to be a single screen for cranking out tie-in films is now a full Movie Studio with its own home in the sidebar, recurring talent careers, rival studios, awards, festivals, TV series, marketing campaigns, distribution partners, era-gated home video releases, and its own line on the Finance screen. Here's the tour.

Where it lives

Once you've unlocked the studio (week 52, $80k cash, 30 reputation), look for the Studios group in the left sidebar. Inside that group you'll see Movies. Open it and you land on the Movie Studio hub: a marquee-style banner up top, then a row of sub-tabs that hold every part of the system.

If your company is public on the stock market, you can also follow your competitors at Empire > Stock Market > Named Equities, where rival studios trade alongside the rest of your portfolio.

The Movie Studio hub

The hub uses sub-tabs the same way Wrestling Federation, Newspaper, and Golf Club do. The exact set you see depends on what you've shipped, but here are the big ones:

• Active: every film or TV series currently in development. Click in to see the production phase, what's left to spend, and which talent are attached.

• Released: every movie you've ever shipped. Click any title to open the full release sheet (more on that below).

• TV and Streaming: your TV series. Each line tells you the actual production progress (e.g. Week 6 of 18, about 12 weeks until air) so you know when the first episode airs. Once it's airing you'll see Episode X of Y aired alongside the weekly revenue.

• Talent: the recurring people who make your movies. Directors, writers, leads, supporting cast, showrunners, TV leads. Each one has fame, age, salary, archetype portrait, filmography. Click any name to open their profile drawer.

• Industry: the rest of the film world. Rival studios, the weekly box-office chart, who's hot and who's cooling.

• Awards: festival submissions, nominations, and the annual ceremony history.

• Home Video: appears once you've shipped at least one home-video format. Aggregate view of every VHS / DVD / Blu-ray / Digital release across your slate.

Making a movie

Click New Movie and a multi-step wizard opens, the same kind of flow as the main game project wizard. You'll walk through:

1. Type and IP. An original story, or an adaptation of one of your own existing games. Yes, your old RPG can become a film.

2. Title.

3. Genre. Drama, action, horror, comedy, sci-fi, animation, and so on.

4. Strategy. Wide theatrical, limited release, festival-first, or direct-to-home-video as the era allows.

5. Budget tier. Low, medium, high, or blockbuster. Each tier has its own cost ramp and revenue ceiling.

6. Cast and crew. Pick a director, writer, lead, and supporting cast from your talent pool. Star power costs extra but helps box office and awards odds.

7. Review. The wizard estimates runtime, total cost, and any blockers (not enough cash, no eligible director, etc.) before you commit.

After creation the film moves through preproduction, casting, production, and postproduction in real game weeks. You can keep tabs on it from the Active tab.

Making a TV series

Same shape, different system. New TV Series gives you a wizard with format (network, premium cable, or streaming, gated by the in-game year), budget tier, episode count, an adaptation-source picker (so you can finally turn an old game into a streaming show), a showrunner, a lead, and a review step. While in production you get a clear week count toward air, then weekly episode revenue once it goes live.

Talent that actually has a career

The talent pool is alive. New people debut at the start of each year, plus a smaller mid-year wave so the names stay fresh. Big stars age, command higher salaries as fame grows, occasionally retire, and once in a while a retired big name will mount a comeback. Scandals can flare up too.

Every talent has an archetype portrait (48 unique headshots in the pool, mixing ages, hair, and ethnicities) and a profile drawer you can open from anywhere their name appears: the Talent tab, the create-movie wizard, the premiere recap, the cast list on a released movie.

Industry sim and rival studios

You're not the only studio in town. Named rivals (Nova Pictures and friends) release their own films on their own cadences, eat into your opening weekends, and rack up critical scores. The weekly box-office chart shows who's on top, and rival films can win awards just like yours.

If your company is public, every named rival also shows up in Empire > Stock Market > Named Equities under the Media sector. Their stock price moves with prestige and recent box-office momentum, with bull/bear analyst commentary tailored to their slate. You can short the studio that just dumped a flop, or back the one with awards buzz.

Festivals and awards season

There's a festival circuit and an annual awards ceremony. When one of your films sits inside a festival's open submission window, you'll see a small gold dot on the Studios item in the sidebar. It's intentionally non-intrusive, just a hint that something is eligible right now. Open the Awards sub-tab to actually submit.

The annual ceremony hands out Best Picture, Director, Writer, Lead, Action, Drama, Horror, and others. Wins drive prestige, talent salaries, and your studio's pulling power for future projects.

Watch the premiere

When a film opens, a recap dock slides in at the bottom right (above the news ticker, not crushed under it). It shows the lead's portrait, the score band, opening revenue, and a button to open the full premiere modal. That modal has a bar chart of your opening vs the rival films opening the same week, plus the attending talent in archetype portraits. Close the dock when you're done.

Released movie detail sheet

In the Released tab, every title is clickable. The detail sheet has its own tabs:

• Overview: financials, total revenue, ROI, distribution partner, reception summary.

• Cast and Crew: every name on the film. Click any row to open that talent's profile drawer.

• Awards and Festivals: where the film was submitted, what it won.

• Sales: the per-week revenue chart, including the home-video tail.

• Home Video: per-film release controls.

Distribution and marketing

At create time you pick a distribution partner that affects screens, splits, and prestige. From there you can plan a per-film marketing campaign on a timeline so spend lines up with key beats (preproduction buzz, opening week, second-weekend hold). Big bursts early help opening; sustained spend helps the long tail.

Home video, era-gated

Once a film has been in theatres for a bit, you can ship it on home video. The format depends on the in-game year:

• VHS: 1980 to 2008.

• DVD: 1996 to 2018.

• Blu-ray: 2006 onwards.

• Digital: 2010 onwards.

Each format has its own setup cost, demand multiplier, and weekly decay curve. You can release a single film on multiple formats over time. The aggregate Home Video sub-tab sorts every release across your slate by lifetime revenue, so you can see which back-catalogue titles are still earning. Collecting all four formats for a single film bags you an achievement.

Finance: the studio is its own row

Open Bank > Business units and you'll see a dedicated Movie Studio (films and TV) row, separate from Core (games and consoles). Expand it for:

• Box office, distribution, and home video revenue.

• TV episode revenue (rights, ads, subscribers).

• Movie production costs for in-flight projects.

• TV production costs for in-flight seasons.

• A small footer showing how many films you've released, how many are in production, and how many TV seasons are active.

The Bank screen's main income and expense breakdowns also list Movies and TV episodes as their own line items (in the income table, expense table, donut charts, and inline summary), so nothing about your film and TV business is hidden in a Core total any more.

Showbiz styling

The hub has a marquee-style banner up top, gold accents on the sub-tab strip, and the active sub-tab gets a warm gradient pill. The 48 talent portraits cover age, hair, and ethnicity variety so the cast lists feel like a real industry rather than a stock-photo dump.

What's next

The Movie Studio will keep growing. We're leaving the door open for things like franchise and cinematic universe webs, studio brand identity sliders (arthouse vs blockbuster, family vs edgy), physical studio lots that gate budget tiers, deeper marketing tools, foreign markets, and more crossover with other parts of the empire. Nothing's locked in yet, but the foundation is there and we'll keep adding.

If something looks broken or weird, hit the feedback button. Have fun running the studio.