PlayStation Productions Will Adapt PlayStation Games to Film and TV
PlayStation Productions is a new unit of Sony Interactive Entertainment with one mission. Its job is to go through the great gaming catalog and figure out which ones could become TV shows or movies. There’s no lack of resources to choose from, and it looks like the first set of plans is even starting production.
Asad Qizilbash is heading PS Productions, and he recently told THR:
“Instead of licensing our IP out to studios, we felt the better approach was for us to develop and produce for ourselves. One, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves.
For the last year and half, two years, we’ve spent time trying to understand the industry, talking to writers, directors, producers. We talked to [film producer] Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Kevin Feige to really get an understanding of the industry.”
Meanwhile, Shawn Layden of Worldwide Studios at SIE has said:
“We’ve got 25 years of game development experience and that’s created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories. We feel that now is a good time to look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television to give our worlds life in another spectrum.
We looked at what Marvel has done in taking the world of comic books and making it into the biggest thing in the film world. It would be a lofty goal to say we’re following in their footsteps, but certainly we’re taking inspiration from that.
You can see just by watching older video game adaptations that the screenwriter or director didn’t understand that world or the gaming thing. The real challenge is, how do you take 80 hours of gameplay and make it into a movie? The answer is, you don’t. What you do is you take that ethos you write from there specifically for the film audience. You don’t try to retell the game in a movie.”
What games are you hoping to get adapted? Live-action Crash Bandicoot? There’s no way it could fail.
