Following the stellar success of DC and Marvel in migrating comic book heroes to the big screen, Sony Interactive Entertainment has launched PlayStation Productions, aimed at taking some of its most successful games to the movies and TV.
“We’ve got 25 years of game development experience and that’s created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories,” Shawn Layden, chairman of Worldwide Studios at SIE told 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,” he added. The production company has a potential goldmine of over 100 original games to trawl, from adventure and sci-fi to mystery and horror.
“Instead of licensing our IP out to studios, we felt the better approach was for us to develop and produce for ourselves,” explained Asad Qizilbash, who will head the new company: “one, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves.”
The new venture takes its inspiration from what Marvel has done in recent years, but it’s conscious that previous efforts to transfer games to the big screen have had a chequered history.
“You can see just by watching older video game adaptations that the screenwriter or director didn’t understand that world or the gaming thing,” Layden argued.
“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.”
PlayStation titles such as Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Ratchet & Clank and many others have grossed billions worldwide and sold millions of copies.
The sheer diversity of PlayStation Productions’ library is one of its major selling points, Layden and Qizilbash told The Reporter.
“We’ve got 25 years of game development experience and that’s created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories,” Shawn Layden, chairman of Worldwide Studios at SIE told 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,” he added. The production company has a potential goldmine of over 100 original games to trawl, from adventure and sci-fi to mystery and horror.
“Instead of licensing our IP out to studios, we felt the better approach was for us to develop and produce for ourselves,” explained Asad Qizilbash, who will head the new company: “one, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves.”
The new venture takes its inspiration from what Marvel has done in recent years, but it’s conscious that previous efforts to transfer games to the big screen have had a chequered history.
“You can see just by watching older video game adaptations that the screenwriter or director didn’t understand that world or the gaming thing,” Layden argued.
“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.”
PlayStation titles such as Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Ratchet & Clank and many others have grossed billions worldwide and sold millions of copies.
The sheer diversity of PlayStation Productions’ library is one of its major selling points, Layden and Qizilbash told The Reporter.
Sourced from Hollywood reporter; additional content by WARC staff
