Bang those drums and clap your hands! Lionhead Studios is celebrating The Movies’ second anniversary; a game that has brought entertainment to many gamers and aspiring directors!

First of all we’d like to thank everyone who worked on The Movies. Over the course of its development (from 2002 until 2005) The Movies had nearly 80 developers working on it here at Lionhead Studios; creating gameplay, sets and props, scenes and animations, camera angles, costumes; the whole lot! While the publisher made sure everyone knew about the game, through some cutting edge marketing. Gamers who bought The Movies felt like a big movie mogul and created some of the best Machinima movies to date. After a search on the web you’ll notice that The Movies brought Machinima to a much wider public which is something we’re really proud of, Machinima for the masses! And don’t forget The Movies is the game with the best credits ever.

A example of those Machinima movies which made it into the mainstream press is The French Democracy; a film about the riots in France in 2005, made by Alex Chan.  Chan had never made a movie before but because The Movies is so easy to use he was able to tell his story of the events leading up to the riots in Paris in 2005. The French Democracy got all the press it deserved, with an article in the Washington Post. In June 2006, Chan made his second Machinima, Seeds of Terrorism, the first known Machinima produced by a conventional film company (Bac Films).

Another Machinima director who made a big name for himself with The Movies is David Riedel. A talented German screenwriter who made one hit after the other and won a record amount of awards at various festivals. You can watch his latest films on his Studio page on The Movies Online. But David is probably best known for his German movie 'Am Ende der Distanz' (At the End of Distance) which you can watch here. The film won the award for Realtime Machinima at the 11th FMX Awards, was nominated for Best Off-the-Shelf Machinima in 2006 by the Academy of Machinima Arts & Sciences, and for Bitfilm Festival 2006's Hamburg Machinima Award.

But there’s much more to The Movies! Read this moving Tale of The Movies in Third World. The Movies is a human fraternity link.

One of the big features of The Movies is its online aspect with the TMO website. The Movies Online is the place where people upload their movies, give and receive feedback, spend Virtual Credits in the Propshop, win awards in competitions and look for talent to help with their new projects. It’s this community, along with the Lionhead Boards, that makes The Movies Online so big. Here are the facts: TMO has around 29,000 Studios with a total of 138,404 movies and all those received more than 803,000 ratings and comments.

The Movies game itself got some critical acclaim over the years and was nominated for Best Game at the Game Developer Choice Awards in 2006 and won a Bafta for Best Video Game Simulation Award. The Macintosh version of the game came with extra features such as HD rendering of your movies and the integration with other Apple tools. The expansion Stunts & Effects – released for Windows in June 2006 – was also made available for Mac with all its new game-play and movie making options.

As a last note we’d like to thank everyone who bought The Movies, made some amazing films and participated in a very active and creative community.