LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Is the honeymoon over for Hollywood and the video game industry?
Over the last four years, movie studios and game companies have grown closer than ever, so much so that big-budget action movies like "Van Helsing" and "The Punisher" now almost demand a companion video game.
But game fans have grown restless at what they see as a lack of fresh ideas, observers say, while publishers have turned more cautious at the prospect of paying high license fees to take a risk on content they do not own.
At the same time, studios, most notably Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., are slowly moving to take back some control themselves, seeing the financial opportunities in owning a bigger piece of potential blockbuster games.