Larry Shapiro becomes president of Oddworld
Larry Shapiro, formerly Chief Creative Officer at Brash Entertainment, has been named the new president of Oddworld Inhabitants. Shapiro was Oddworld’s agent when he was co‐head of CAA’s videogame department, and joins the company having left Brash—the game publisher recently turned into a skeleton crew during financial hardship—in July. OWI’s previous president, Lorne Lanning, will step down to focus more on the company’s creative side.
Speaking to Variety weblog The Cut Scene, Lorne says:
No one is more in stride with us than Larry. We both see the same future landscape. It’s a petty radical departure from the contemporary landscape. While we think there’s a number of barriers to break through, we think there are tremendous opportunities on the other side of the barrier.
Shapiro has similar high hopes that the new partnership will aid Oddworld’s new business model:
I have a great opportunity to add value to a company and to work with people who I am inspired by and who look to where the industry is going and not where its been. We intend to break the model of where games are today in a unique and entertaining way.
Considering Oddworld Inhabitants’ next release, The Cut Scene reporter Ben Fritz supposes it won’t be the Citizen Siege feature film produced in partnership with Vanguard Animation, having been told by Sherry McKenna that there were ‘creative differences’ and ‘the rights are reverting back to Oddworld.’
Sources: The Cut Scene