Gameloft won’t return to produce the next installment of The Fast and the Furious video games. Instead, The Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle-earth developer Kabam will take the wheel for the adaptation of Fast & Furious 6.
Kabam announced today that it will have a free-to-play Fast & Furious 6 out this spring in time for the film’s May 26 release. The publisher’s newly acquired studio Exploding Barrel Games, which produced the Margaritaville game on Facebook, will handle development.
“The Fast and the Furious series is one of the hottest movie and mobile-gaming franchises of all time,” Kabam Studios president Andrew Sheppard said in a statement. “Kabam is pedal down, blending the art of game design and the science of free-to-play distribution to make this game a thrill for street racing fans around the world. I can’t imagine a better partner to bring this game to market than Universal.”
Universal Pictures revealed a first quick trailer for Fast & Furious 6 during last night’s Super Bowl match between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers.
Check out the trailer below:
It’s unclear if Exploding Barrel will work hard to get Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s sweet flying-punch move into the game.
Early in the last decade, movie studios would work with major developers to release a full console version of a movie like this. Now, movie-adaptation games are much more prevalent in the smartphone app free-to-play market.