Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful to release on February 27

With the recent release and success of Temple Run 2, Imangi doesn’t seem to be taking a break. According to SlashGear, the company is working on another game in the series, and once more, it will be a movie tie-in game. The upcoming Temple Run will be based on the Disney movie Oz the Great and Powerful. The game is set to be released on February 27.

The game was announced through a tweet by Disney representative Cecile Fouques. No other detail on the game is available yet. It’s not even known whether the title of the game will simply be Temple Run: Oz or Temple Run: Oz the Great and Powerful. While it does make more sense to have the complete name of the movie in the game, it ends up being a name that’s too long to say in conversation.

Getting another movie tie-in

Earlier this month, Imangi had announced that Temple Run had hit 50 million downloads in 13 days.

Imangi’s press release stated: “Temple Run 2 originally launched exclusively on the App Store on January 17 and quickly rose to the  number 1 slot in Free Apps, earning over six million downloads in less than 24 hours. Following a release on Google Play and Amazon Marketplace, the sequel continued its record-breaking success, racing to the number 1 spot, respectively, in each store. Following in the footsteps of Temple Run, which has been downloaded over 170 million times, Temple Run 2 has cemented itself in mobile gaming history.”

Keith Shepherd, co-founder of Imangi, said the Temple Run franchise has grown much bigger than the company. “The game has performed beyond our wildest dreams, and we are thrilled that gamers and fans have embraced Temple Run 2 in such a short period of time,” he said.

The Temple Run franchise has expanded to include apparel with JEM Sportswear, digital comics with Ape Entertainment, and card and board games with Spin Master, among other licensing partnerships. In June 2012, Imangi and Disney Pixar launched Temple Run: Brave, a collaboration between the makers of the animated film Brave and the game developers. The game rushed to the top spot on Apple’s App Store soon after it was released.

Temple Run’s premise is simple: as an intrepid explorer, you steal an idol from a temple (where else?) and are chased by "demonic monkeys," and all you can do is run away from them as fast as possible. There are obstacles, of course, like overhanging tree branches or sections where the path has caved in.

As far as running games are concerned, the franchise is easily the most popular one for smartphone users, a fact underlined by this latest achievement. Temple Run 2 was first released on iOS and Android users had to wait a week for it to be released. Even so, the game has been widely praised for its new levels and intricate courses. Check out our review of Temple Run 2 here.