Sony Interactive Entertainment has launched PlayStation Productions, a production studio that will begin adapting PlayStation exclusives into films and TV shows.
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, the new production company will be headed by Asad Qizilbash and overseen by chairman of Worldwide Studios at SIE, Shawn Layden. Production has already started on its first slate of projects at Sony Pictures in Culver City.
“We’ve got 25 years of game development experience and that’s created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories,” Layden tells The Hollywood Reporter. “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.”
From God of War to The Last Of Us to Crash Bandicoot and Spyro, PlayStation Productions has a wide range of content to adapt. “Instead of licensing our IP out to studios, we felt the better approach was for us to develop and produce for ourselves,” says Qizilbash. “One, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves.”
Qizilbash stated that SIE have been in long talks with film industry professionals for a great understanding of the medium including Transformers producer, Lorenzo di Bonaventura, and Marvel Studios’ Kevin Feige.
“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,” says Layden. “It would be a lofty goal to say we’re following in their footsteps, but certainly we’re taking inspiration from that.
Layden also mentions the video game movie “curse” and how they hope to prevent this for their future projects. He claims this could be prevented by focusing on the “ethos” of the game and avoid retelling the same story from an 80 hour game.
With the recent success of Pokemon: Detective Pikachu, could Sony further eradicate bad adaptations of beloved video games? Only time will tell, but in the meantime let us know which Sony properties you’d like to see on the big screen via PlayStation Productions…