Industry Machinima, New media Founded 2004 | Founder Alexander Winn Type of business Private | |
Key people Alexander Winn
Ryan Luther Products The Codex
The Heretic
Vox Populi
Forsaken Headquarters Dallas, Texas, United States | ||
Edgeworks Entertainment is a machinima and new media production company created by Alexander Winn and Ryan Luther. At midnight on February 9, 2005, Episode 1 of their new machinima series was released. The Codex crew, which then consisted of Alexander Winn, Ryan Luther, Patrick Malone and Meghan Foster, all got together to celebrate the launch of the The Codex Series. Lauren Jenks joined the crew after a few months, and the series reached 20 episodes before it ended on August 13, 2005, when Episode 20, "The End of All Things", was released. On February 9, 2006, Edgeworks Entertainment announced their new addition to The Codex Series, The Heretic, with the addition of three more members of the staff, and again on February 9, 2007 the first episode was released. In 2009 Edgeworks launched a community-driven review site called Vox Populi and 2010 sees their newest creation, a live-action webseries named Radical.
Contents
Main crew
The Codex Series
The Codex Series is the name for the overarching story of the machinima series The Codex and The Heretic. Collectively, the series have received over 80 million hits as of April 2008.
The Codex
The Codex is a 20-episode online machinima series, set in Bungie Studios' Halo video game universe. Along with its sister series, The Heretic, it is part of the greater Codex Series. It relates the story of a Covenant invasion of a Human world in order to recover a Forerunner artifact, and the story of the Humans resistance of that invasion. Since its initial release on February 9, 2005, The Codex has earned a large international fan base, and has been featured in numerous print, radio, televised, and online news media such as NPR, mtvU, Xbox World 360 Magazine in Britain, and the front covers of the Dallas Observer and Houston Press. In his September 29, 2005 Long Tail blog entry, Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired magazine, described The Codex as the best machinima he had ever seen and an excellent example of his Long Tail theory. The Codex is the highest trafficked peer-produced Halo machinima series in existence, ranking second only to the professionally produced series Red vs. Blue.
The Heretic
The Heretic is the second machinima series made by Edgeworks Entertainment. Like its predecessor, The Heretic is set in Bungie Studios' Halo video game universe. It is a prequel to the popular series The Codex. The Heretic tells the story of how the Codex was found, and how the various characters in The Codex came to be involved with it. At 12:01 AM, February 9, 2007, Edgeworks Entertainment released Episode 1: Seeds of Doubt. [1]
The Reclaimer
The Reclaimer was planned to be a sequel to The Codex and also the final series in The Codex Series. However, production of the series has officially been halted until further notice as a result of Microsoft's release of their Game Content Usage Rules, which made certain elements of the series impossible.
Vox Populi
Vox Populi is the first non-machinima endeavor from Edgeworks Entertainment. It is a community-driven review site, in which registered members can post reviews for, at the time of release, movies and video games. In the following weeks, Edgeworks also added television and book review sections.
Forsaken
Forsaken was a planned machinima series by Edgeworks Entertainment, and would have been the group's first to be made in the World of Warcraft game engine. According to Edgeworks, the series centered on an "over-the-hill hero" who "must rise to the challenge when the forces of evil begin their bid for control over the land of Azeroth". The series was announced on April 12, 2006, with a teaser trailer and was to be written and directed by Malone and co-produced by Malone and Winn. Forsaken would have been the first Edgeworks production not to be written or directed by Winn, and Edgeworks cited the new series as the first step towards making a community for "artistic development and distribution". Unfortunately, due to the series being rendered impossible thanks to a patch released for World of Warcraft, production of the series has halted as of January 3, 2007, and it seems unlikely that it will ever be completed or released.
Radical
On 9 February 2010, 5 years after the release of The Codex it was announced that Edgeworks would be creating a new, original, live action web series called Radical. A teaser trailer was released, along with a new forum section and media components. Production will be started late spring 2010 with a release date of the first episode also around that time.