Warner Bros has signalled its intention of expanding more aggressively into the video games industry with the acquisition of TT Games, the UK publisher of the LEGO Star Wars series which has sold 12m copies around the world.

The deal, for an undisclosed sum, will give Time Warner’s Hollywood studio a stronger in-house capacity for developing game spin-offs of its film franchises, but will also allow it to create video games which are unrelated to its movies.