Category: news

Brütal Legend developers Double Fine Productions say they’ll make a sequel to the 2009 heavy metal videogame starring Jack Black and Ozzy Osbourne – on one condition.

Two months after cutting ties with Xbox, the independent US studio pledge to make the game if their current Kickstarter campaign receives $100 million US (£74,068,500) in donations.

Double Fine describe the campaign, Amnesia Fortnight, as “a two-week period in which we forget about all the things we should be working on to pitch one another our wildest game ideas, choose our favourites, and make prototypes of them”.

Backers who donate more than $15 (£11.11) will be able to vote between the ideas developers present and decide which four get made. $30 backers get double voting power, and those who donate $60 and above get four-times the vote. At time of writing, the campaign has raised $385,867 (£285,856), just shy of its $400,000 goal with 28 days left.

Double Fine confirmed they were serious about Brütal Legend 2 and its proposed $100 million budget in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

“We aren’t joking,” they wrote. “If someone wants to give us $100M (or some miracle happens and the Kickstarter makes more than double the current record holder, which is $44M raised), we’ll make Brütal Legend 2. We’d love to do it, but a game like that requires significant funding.”

They added in a reply: “It would require the entire studio to solely focus on a single game for a long time, and funding would have to cover many elements of development. But if enough people want it that we raise $100M, who are we to refuse?”

The pledge comes two years after Double Fine head Tim Schafer admitted he was “torn” about making a follow-up to the action-adventure title, which was considered a commercial disappointment but went on to find a cult following.

“People ask about Brütal Legend 2 all the time, and I’m torn about that,” he wrote in a blog post marking the original’s 15th anniversary. “I know some of them want it with an evolution of the RTS [real-time strategy] stuff and some of them just want God Of War with [main character] Eddie Riggs. I understand the logic of making the second option, but I’m much more excited about the first.”

Programmer Chad Dawson added, “There’s so much of a world to explore that could be done in many ways. It could be an RPG [role-playing game], it could be an RTS. Or even an auto battler!”

As well as Black, who voiced protagonist Riggs, and Osbourne, who lent his voice and likeness to the Guardian Of Metal, Brütal Legend’s cast included rock musicians Lita Ford, Rob Halford and Lemmy Kilmister. Decorated actor Tim Curry, who died last month at the age of 80, voiced antagonist Emperor Doviculus. To honour Curry after news of his death broke, Double Fine made Brütal Legend free to download for 666 minutes.

Self-styled metal queen Doro Pesch joins Whitesnake and Sepultura members on a new, heavy cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 classic Go Your Own Way.

Former Warlock vocalist Pesch, Whitesnake guitarist Joel Hoekstra and Sepultura drummer Grayson Nekrutman tackled the Rumours song for upcoming heavy metal Fleetwood tribute album Steel Rumours: The Songs Of Fleetwood Mac Reforged In Metal, set to drop on November 20 via Cleopatra Records.

Other musicians lined up to appear include ex-Judas Priest vocalist Tim “Ripper” Owens, ex-Black Sabbath/Dio drummer Vinny Appice, Rainbow singer Ronnie Romero and Blackmore’s Night singer Candice Night.

Pesch says of her take on Go Your Own Way: “I’ve always liked the song. And it was fun to give it a new twist – especially with a great guitarist like Joel Hokstra and powerhouse drummer Greyson Nekrutman.”

The Fleetwood Mac single was written by guitarist Lindsay Buckingham about his failed relationship with vocalist Stevie Nicks, who hated some of the lyrics he’d penned.

“I very much resented him telling the world that ‘packing up, shacking up’ with different men was all I wanted to do,” Nicks told Rolling Stone. “He knew it wasn’t true. It was just an angry thing that he said.”

The song was released in December 1976 and became a Top 10 single in the US Billboard Hot 100 and reached number 38 in the UK.

Many bands have covered the song in the 50 years since it was first released, including Biffy Clyro, The Cranberries, NOFX and Thunder.

Doro’s last studio album, Conqueress – Forever Strong and Proud, was released in 2023.