Sony is taking its video-game heroes and their stories to the world of movies and TV series, thanks to the opening of PlayStation Productions, the new studio in Sony Interactive Entertainment sub-division, under the control of Shawn Layden.
Speaking to Hollywood Reporter, Shawn Layden announced that a new studio within SIE has born in which Sony’s exclusive video games during all of these years are going to be rich adaptations for producing movies and TV series. PlayStation Productions is the new member of Sony’s family in SIE division which is led by Asad Qizilbash. Layden 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.
Qizilbash was also present at the interview and added:
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.
Following Asad’s words, Layden continued:
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.
It’s worth noting that the first project of the studio has started its development process but we don’t know yet what game is the adaptation for it. Beyond that, whether its a movie or series is yet to be known.
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