For all of you who wished for GTA to be turned into a movie, your prayers may have finally been answered.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony launched its own production studio, PlayStation Productions, to turn a nearly quarter-century-old catalog of games into TV shows and films. Adding that the enterprise, headed by Asad Qizilbash and overseen by the chairman of Worldwide Studios at SIE, Shawn Layden, is already in motion and that the studio is working on its first set of projects at Sony’s lot in Culver City, California.
Sony launched its own production studio, PlayStation Productions, to turn #PlayStation games into movies and TV shows.
➡️ https://t.co/SztP2QTjOp pic.twitter.com/PX6wXjHNlE
— Complex (@Complex) May 20, 2019
With a collection of over 100 original properties, this means content ranging from sci-fi to action to mystery to horror. “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.”
While other video game studios, including Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard, have opened film and television arms to adapt their games for a different audience, PlayStation Productions differs both in its deep catalog of content and also in its approach to production. Sony Pictures, a sister company, will help with distribution, but the production of projects will be handled by PlayStation Productions firsthand, not licensed out as is the case with similar enterprises at other game companies.
“For the last year and a half, two years, we’ve spent time trying to understand the industry, talking to writers, directors, producers,” says Qizilbash. “We talked to [film producer] Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Kevin Feige to really get an understanding of the industry.”
“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.”
Film adaptations of games have been done before with 2016’s Assassin’s Creed and Warcraft, both of which however failed to meet expectations.
Layden will speak about the continuing evolution of PlayStation’s Worldwide Studios at the Collision Conference in Toronto, Canada on Tuesday.
