Although the overwhelming majority of Sierra's classic games were original concepts, Sierra's collaboration with film makers, authors, and other works stretches back as far as late 1982. Probably their first conversion from movie to interactive game was through a collaboration with Jim Henson Associates with the release of Hi-Res Adventure #6: The Dark Crystal in the Spring of 1983, which was based on the movie released in December 1982.
Another well-known collaboration during Sierra's early days was established with Disney when the gaming market was still in its child shoes. Sierra, and particularly Al Lowe (of Leisure Suit Larry fame), handled Disney Software throughout the mid eighties, developing mostly educational games for young children based on the famous Disney characters, as well as an adventure game conversion of the Black Cauldron.
During the nineties Sierra occasionally collaborated with famous authors, such as Raymond E. Feist of which the Krondor games are based on Feist's Riftwar Cycle, and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee, of which the game Rama is based on their novel Rama II.
When, after a tumultuous time of acquisitions, spin-offs and liquidations, Sierra became property of Vivendi Games, the number of games based on other media strongly increased. In the early 2000's, most of these games were published both through Sierra and Fox Interactive, based on 20th Century Fox properties, such as The Simpsons, Aliens vs Predator, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Die Hard and so forth.
Also worth mentioning is the collaboration between Vivendi and Tolkien Enterprises, established in 2002, which resulted in three Lord of the Rings games published through Sierra and other Vivendi subsidiary Black Label Games: Fellowship of the Ring, The Hobbit, and War of the Ring.
Later on in the 2000s, games based on movies became almost as common as original franchises.
