Randy Pitchford is leaving Gearbox games to focus on Gearbox movies, is still head of Gearbox overall
Gearbox president and CEO Randy Pitchford is stepping back from games to focus on the company's broader efforts to break into film and TV, as president of the publisher's new Gearbox Studios subsidiary.
Announcing the corporate reshuffle on Twitter, Pitchford explained that veteran chief technology officer Steve Jones will take on his role as president of Gearbox Software. Pitchford ultimately remains CEO and president of Gearbox as a whole, and notes that he'll "continue wearing a creative hat", but that he's moving to develop and grow a new film-focussed side of the company.
Congratulations to Steve Jones, who I have recently promoted to become President of Software at The Gearbox Entertainment Company. Attached is a diagram of the high level organization chart along with excerpts from my internal staff letter announcing the promotion. pic.twitter.com/4FeX94SIW2October 6, 2021
That news won't be a shock to anyone who watched Gearbox's E3 show this year which, while light on games, featured plenty of Pitchford awkwardly chasing famous actors across the set of the Borderlands movie and failing to score a high-five off Kevin Hart.
That said, Pitchford does appear to only be running Studios temporarily. His statement notes that he hopes to get the "transmedia" unit to a place where it's largely self-sufficient, at which point it will likely get a new president.
We don't currently know what plans Gearbox Studios has for screen and stream beyond the Borderlands movie, which currently has no set release date. But should that film be a success, what else could we expect from adaptations of Gearbox's games?
An HBO Brothers in Arms mini-series? Battleborn revived as a Saturday-morning cartoon? The Duke Nukem cinematic universe? Erm... maybe that's enough speculation.