(By Balaseshan) Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA), which provides online social game services, is planning to create original animated television show based on its farming simulation social network game -- Farmville.
The company's move comes as part an effort to widen its business into other areas and also expand its FarmVille brand past a mere Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) game.
The company has hired Rush Hour director Bruce Ratner and studio Six Eleven Media to produce the animated show of 30 minutes each based on the hit game.
Farmville game was developed by Zynga in 2009 and a sequel, FarmVille 2, was released in September 2012. The game requires players to build farms, breed and harvest both animals and crops, and to prosper in this virtual farm world.
Farmville is available as an Adobe Flash application via the social-networking website Facebook and Microsoft's MSN Games, and was for a time available as an app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.
In early 2013, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said FarmVille had reached $1 billion in total player bookings. Zynga said the FarmVille 2 game had 40 million monthly active users and 8 million daily active users.
ZNGA closed Monday's regular session up 7.00% at $3.67. The stock has been trading between $2.09 and $15.91 for the past 52 weeks.