Key developers of prominent Star Wars games that were canceled, Dominic Robilliard and Amy Hennig, have joined forces at Skydance New Media, a developer of Star Wars and Marvel games. Following the closure of his previous employer and first-party PlayStation developer, PixelOpus, Robilliard will soon join Hennig's team at Skydance. Prior to his work at Sony, Robilliard served as the creative director at Lucasfilm for the ultimately canceled Star Wars 1313 game, which was designed to follow a bounty hunter's adventures on Coruscant. The game was scrapped in 2013 after Disney acquired Lucasfilm and terminated all of its game development initiatives. At around the same time, EA secured its exclusive Star Wars games license from Disney and approved Project Ragtag, a narrative-driven Star Wars game produced by Visceral, the developer behind Dead Space. However, the project, led by Hennig, was dissolved by EA four years later.
Hennig's freelancing stint eventually led her to Skydance, where she assumed the role of head of Skydance New Media during the studio's inception in 2019. Recently, Robilliard revealed that he will be joining the team as the game director, fulfilling his lifelong dream of working on projects set in the Star Wars universe and collaborating on Skydance's upcoming Marvel game set in WW2. Hennig expressed her excitement for the appointment, stating that the studio is "thrilled."
Skydance Interactive, a game development arm of Skydance Media, specializes in VR experiences like The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners - Chapter 2 and Archangel. In contrast, Skydance New Media has secured the rights to develop games based on several major IPs and boasts a team of industry veterans, including Hennig, who likely helped convince Marvel and Disney to greenlight the company's first projects. Additionally, the parent company, Skydance Media, is a well-known Hollywood powerhouse with a track record of producing successful films such as the Coen brothers' True Grit, Top Gun: Maverick, and multiple Mission: Impossible films.
With a decade of experience in television production, Skydance has already proven its ability to create successful shows like Altered Carbon and Jack Ryan. Although their upcoming Star Wars and Marvel projects are their most ambitious game development efforts yet, the company has a track record of producing entertainment that appeals to a wide audience.
