Sony PlayStation is persisting in going all in on diverting its flagship video contests into TV shows and films — according to Variety, the company disclosed that it’s making a show founded on Horizon Zero Dawn with Netflix at an affair for investors.
Sony is also operating on a movie based on the Gran Turismo series but hasn’t found a distributor for it and could feature Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Chappie) as its director.
Both projects are documented as “early development,” so we likely won’t be streaming them for quite a while. However, Sony’s persisting in introducing new TV and movie projects shows that the company is pretty determined to expand the PlayStation brand beyond just hardware and video games.
PlayStation Productions currently has several other projects. It’s reportedly working on:
- a Ghost of Tsushima movie
- a Twisted Metal series on Peacock
- an adaptation of The Last of Us for HBO
- a God of War performance for Amazon Prime
- a Metal Gear Solid movie
That is a lot of great franchises, and some of the projects have some heavy hitters attached. For example, Oscar Isaac will be recreating Solid Snake, Ghost of Tsushima will be directed by one of the people after the John Wick movies, Pedro Pascal will serve as Joel, and Bella Ramsey will play Ellie. And, of course, the newly released Uncharted film starred Hollywood’s golden boy, Tom Holland. However, PlayStation Productions isn’t dropping its toe in the cinematic waters; it’s going headfirst.
This news also indicates that Sony’s continuing its working strategy with different streaming companies. No matter what you go to, the company desires to ensure you’ll be able to watch at least something starting with its video game characters (or, like cars in the case of Gran Turismo). During its investor talks, Sony said that the “highly competitive streaming wars” aren’t the only move the company’s pushing to expand the PlayStation brand outside the audience of just people who buy consoles. On Wednesday, the company declared that it wants to significantly expand its games’ presence on PC and mobile.
More Sony video games are in line for the TV treatment. In an investor briefing on Thursday, Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Tony Vinciquerra revealed that popular PlayStation titles “Horizon Zero Dawn” and “Gran Turismo” are the latest games going Hollywood.
The “Horizon Zero Dawn” series, based on the popular video games where robotic dinosaurs roam a post-apocalyptic America, is in early development at Netflix. In contrast “Gran Turismo,” a racing series, hasn’t landed a distributor yet and is also in early development.
In addition to the new projects, Sony confirmed that the “God of War” series, first announced in March as being shopped around to Amazon, has landed at the Prime Video streamer.
Sony and PlayStation Productions are ramping up their projects based on their favorite video games, first kicked off with the “Uncharted” movie starring Tom Holland earlier this year. The next highly anticipated title is the “Last of Us” series coming to HBO, which stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as the zombie apocalypse survivors Joel and Ellie. There’s also a “Twisted Metal” series, based on the vehicular combat video games, starring Anthony Mackie, Stephanie Beatriz, Neve Campbell, and Thomas Haden Church coming to Peacock.
On top of those, there’s a “Ghost of Tsushima” feature film in the works from “John Wick” director Chad Stahelski. The video game takes place in feudal Japan and follows a samurai named Jin Sakai on a quest for revenge during the Mongol invasion. Outside of Sony’s realm, other video game adaptations in the works include:
- Amazon’s “Fallout” series, starring Walton Goggins and Ella Purnell, from the “Westworld” creative team.
- Netflix’s “Bioshock” movie.
- A rumored “Mass Effect” series at Amazon.
The PlayStation Network is online assistance with about 110 million registered users (as of June 2013) and over 103 million active users monthly. (as of December 2019) It incorporates an online virtual market, the PlayStation Store. It authorizes the purchase and download of games and various forms of multimedia, a subscription-based online service comprehended as PlayStation Plus, and a social gaming networking service named PlayStation Home, which had over 41 million users globally at the time of its closing in March 2015.
PlayStation Mobile (previously PlayStation Suite) is a software framework that furnishes PlayStation content on mobile devices. Version 1.xx supports PlayStation Vita, PlayStation TV, and specific devices that run the Android operating system, whereas rendition 2.00, released in 2014, only targeted PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV. The content released under the framework consists of only original PlayStation games presently.
Seventh generation PlayStation creations also use the XrossMediaBar, an Technology & Engineering Emmy Award-winning graphical user interface. Furthermore, a touchscreen-based user interface called LiveArea was pitched for the PlayStation Vita, which integrates social networking components into the interface.
The PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 2 consoles also featured approval for Linux-based operating systems, OtherOS, and Linux for PlayStation 2, respectively, though this has been discontinued. Finally, the series has also been known for its numerous marketing campaigns, the latest being the “Greatness Awaits” and, ultimately, “Play Has No Limits” commercials in the United States.
The series also includes a strong line-up of first-party games due to SIE Worldwide Studios, a group of many studios possessed by Sony Interactive Entertainment that exclusively developed them for PlayStation consoles. In addition, the series features various budget re-releases of games by Sony with different names for each region; these include the Greatest Hits, Platinum, Essentials, and The Best selection of games.