Brash Entertainment

Brash Entertainment said Monday that it had raised $400 million in funding to develop games based on movies and television shows. Although relatively modest within Hollywood circles, the money raised by the Los Angeles start-up is nearly unprecedented in the video game industry. Investors included Abry Partners, New York Life Capital Partners, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance and PPM America. "It's an astonishing amount of money," said Geoff Keighley, editor of industry website Gameslice.

Soulless. Repetitive. Clunky. Those were some of the kinder words that critics have bestowed on video games based on Hollywood films. But many of those games have nonetheless sold well thanks to the movie marketing blitz that accompanies box-office releases. For example, the "Enter the Matrix" game, which one critic called "astoundingly dull," sold 2.3 million copies in the U.S.