Step 1: Don’t Hire Paul W. S. Anderson
Sony has opened up a studio for the purposes of adapting their gaming IP’s to television and film properties. PlayStation Productions, as it’s called, is not just their method of making some money off of these properties in traditional media spaces, though. It’s also meant to combat the longstanding problem with video game movies; namely, that they mostly suck ass.
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.
SIE chairman of Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden
The studio will be headed up by Asad Qizilbash and overseen by Shawn Layden. But while their plan is to adapt these IP’s to film and television, they’re not going to be cranking them out at top speed. Thankfully, they’re going to take their time and get it right, according to Layden.
We don’t have to rush to market. We don’t have a list of ‘X number of titles must be done in this year.’ None of that. The company has been very accommodating to our ambition around this, to grow this in a measured, thoughtful way.
Shawn Layden
As for what they’ll be adapting, though, there’s no real say on that just yet. The Uncharted film has been in development hell for a while; this may be a prime opportunity to get it out of said hell. Regardless, they’re taking a different approach to the concept. Who knows? It might just work.
Source: Engadget
About Author
