Sony opened a film studio for the adaptation of their games. The company promises not to rush and think about quality

Sony Interactive Entertainment itself will create films and television series based on their games. In the new PlayStation Productions film studio, the opening of which was officially announced by the resource The Hollywood Reporterwork has already begun on the first projects.

The division will be led by PlayStation Vice President of Marketing Asad Qizilbash and overseen by Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios Chairman Shawn Layden. PlayStation Productions will handle the production itself, unlike similar departments at Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard that sell the rights to other companies. 

“We have 25 years of video game development experience, and during that time we have created many great games, series and stories,” Leiden said in an interview with the resource. “It seems to us that now is the time to look at other opportunities that the media industry provides: streaming, movies, TV series. This would allow us to breathe new life into our worlds.”

“Instead of selling licenses to use our intellectual property to other studios, we decided to do the production ourselves,” Kizilbash said. “Firstly, we are more familiar with the material, and secondly, we know what PlayStation fans want. For the last one and a half or two years, we have been trying to understand the specifics of the film industry, communicating with screenwriters, directors, and producers. We spoke with Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Kevin Feige We tried to understand how Marvel managed to conquer the whole world with comics and films based on them. It would be too bold to say that we are following in their footsteps, but at least their success is very inspiring to us.”

According to Kizilbash, over the past twenty years, the film industry has changed, and now it is much easier to attract directors and producers to work on film adaptations of video games, also because many of them have become gamers themselves. The already unsurprising failures of films based on games - from recent examples one can recall the films on Assassin's Creed and Warcraft - the head explains by the fact that the scriptwriters and directors did not understand what tasks they faced.

“The main question is how to turn 80 hours of gameplay into a movie,” he said. Answer: You don't need to do this. You should not retell the game in a movie format - you should transfer the most characteristic features to the film adaptation, thinking about the audience."

Executives hope the films will help sell PlayStation exclusives. “After beating the game in 40 to 50 hours, fans have to wait three to four years for a sequel,” Laiden explained. “We would like to give them the opportunity to quickly see their favorite characters again, but in a different capacity.” The studio will not rush into production. Leiden stressed that the high quality of film adaptations is a priority for PlayStation Productions. Don't think, he said, that Sony expects a certain number of releases from the division each year.

There are no details about the planned projects yet, but it is quite possible to expect that PlayStation Productions can bring God of War to the screens. Horizon Zero Dawn, uncharted, The Last of Us, Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet & Clank, InFamous and Days Gone. It is not known whether the new studio is involved in the work on the film version of Uncharted: in more than a decade, it has changed directors several times. This January, Variety сообщилthat this position was taken by Dan Trachtenberg (Dan Trachtenberg), known for "Cloverfield, 10". Perhaps the division will help get out of the "production hell" of the film adaptation The Last of Us, work on which, apparently, stopped in 2016 due to creative differences.

Source: 3dnews.ru