Deadline is reporting that Amazon is currently in talks to turn PlayStation franchise God of War into a television series.
While neither Sony nor Amazon were able or willing to confirm the news outside of an official announcement, Deadline’s report says the show will be overseen by “The Expanse creators/executive producers Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby and The Wheel of Time executive producer/showrunner Rafe Judkins,” while there will also be input from “Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions, which collaborate on all TV series based on PlayStation games.”
While there have been a ton of God of War games released over the last 17 years, I’d assume any TV series based on the games in the year 2022 would be taking most of its creative cues—at least in terms of presentation and tone—from the 2018 game and its upcoming sequel.
The deal, if it does indeed make it into production, would mark the latest entry into what’s turning into a gold rush for video game-to-TV adaptations. We have seen other PlayStation series like The Last Of Us (HBO) and Twisted Metal (also Amazon) picked up, the former now well and truly underway, having been filming since 2021.
Then there’s Mass Effect (also Amazon), Resident Evil (Netflix) and Fallout (again, Amazon), not to mention Paramount’s big Halo series, which debuts later this month. And that’s just the TV shows! We got the Uncharted movie last month, and Netflix is hoping to make a BioShock film sometime in the future as well.
It’s not hard seeing why production companies and movie/TV studios are rushing to video games at the moment. As books and more recently comic books have shown, adaptations can be safe money since they’re appealing to a baked-in fanbase. Many of these video games either have big fanbases or have crafted their own unique, compelling stories that are perfect for the small screen. The success of The Witcher on Netflix, which—let’s be real--is getting a lore more juice from The Witcher 3 than the book series, has probably helped as well.