Brash Entertainment was a short-lived game publisher based within the United States that was founded in May 2007 as a $400 million cash position by Legendary Pictures co-founder Thomas Tull, Nicholas Longano, Bert Ellis, and Mitch Davis. The company was founded to publish titles based on licensed properties. The founders hoped that Brash would become the next big name in the video game industry.
The whole company ended up being a huge flunk right from the very start. Tull had never worked into the video game business before, and neither did Ellis or Davis. Longano was the only one who did have prior knowledge as he previously worked for Vivendi Universal Games, but wasn't in a major position when compared to Brash. And to make matter's worse, Tull barely did anything for his own game publisher, mainly doing work in New York City for other firms.
Then, things proved to be a problem when the company entered into a heavily botched deal with 20th Century Fox. The company entered into the deal hoping that they would get to publish a game based on the Night at the Museum franchise, but Fox instead insisted they published games based on Alvin and the Chipmunks, Jumper and Space Chimps beforehand in less than a year. The only issue with that was that Alvin was a meer months away from being released, and Brash had to hire a developer to produce a tie-in product that was produced as cheaply and fast as possible. Alvin sold a decent 300,000 units across all platforms after its release in December 2007, and now Brash had to do the same low budget and development cycle for the Jumper and Space Chimps titles. Then, they proved wrong with Space Chimps because the company assumed it was an original IP by Fox and expected it to gross as much as Ice Age, when in reality it was just an acquisition for the North American market and was a box-office flop globally. Needless to say, the game tie-ins for both films ended up worse for ware with both critics and sales, costing Brash a lot of money in the process. Even the Alvin game ended up being a flop in sales despite it being more successful.
At this point, many licensors were weary of partnering up with Brash due to the low-quality nature of the respective movie tie-ins and the botched job at handling development to its partners. The company still hoped they would do decently with licenses from Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and DC Comics, Lionsgate and Six Flags, but needless to say, it all fell apart. The company announced a major project for 2010 which was soon revealed to be a game based on Superman.
As months passed by, major employees began to resign from Brash - Nicholas Longano in May, Larry Shapiro in July, and Thomas Tull in October. Eventually, Brash's other co-founders left which left a huge toll in the company even staying alive. By October, the company began to stop paying its developers after being informed that they were going to be running out of money, resulting in lawsuits in regards to unpaid royalties. Brash then fired a majority of their staff on November 7 and reduced their game faire to only include two titles - the Wii version of Six Flags Fun Park' and Saw. But on November 14, 2008, Brash officially announced they were shutting their doors, and planned to secure the licenses back to their original owners.
One of the respective titles that was planned to be published by Brash - The Tale of Despereaux, went gold prior to the closure, and was sold to Atari in December.
Games published by Brash include:
- Alvin and the Chipmunks (2008, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, Windows)
- Jumper: Griffin's Story (2008, PlayStation 2, Wii, Xbox 360)
- Space Chimps (2008, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Windows)
- Six Flags: Fun Park (2008, Nintendo DS)
Games planned to be published by Beash include:
- The Tale of Despereaux (2008, PlayStation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, Windows), taken over by Atari and Universal Pictures
- Six Flags: Fun Park (2008, Wii), taken over by Ubisoft and published in 2009
- Saw (2009, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows), taken over by Konami
- Superman: Man of Steel (2010, unknown platforms) Rights reverted to Warner Bros., and the developer behind the title closed in May 2009, leading to the cancellation of the game
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian - The Video Game (2009, Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Windows), taken over by Majesco Entertainment
- Clash of the Titans (2010, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360), taken over by Namco Bandai Games
- Prison Break: The Conspiracy (2010, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows), taken over by Deep Silver
- The Flash (unknown), reverted to Warner Bros., cancelled following closure of developer.
