Sony's new studio will turn PlayStation games into movies and television shows

Shawn Knight

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Bottom line: Sony spent the last two years trying to learn the business – talking to directors, writers and producers. They looked at what Marvel has done with its comic books and super hero movies and drew inspiration from it. It helps that a lot of filmmakers these days are also gamers themselves. That wasn’t the case just 20 years ago and is one of the reasons that most of the earlier film adaptations of games stunk.

Sony Interactive Entertainment has created a new production studio to develop movies and television shows based on its extensive catalog of video games. PlayStation Productions, led by Asad Qizilbash and overseen by Shawn Layden, chairman of Worldwide Studios at SIE, is already hard at work on its first batch of projects according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Layden told the publication that they’ve got 25 years of game development experience and that has created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories. “Now is a good time,” Layden said, “to look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television to give our worlds life in another spectrum.”

Sony has a library consisting of more than 100 original properties across a variety of genres. Rather than license out the IP to other studios, they felt it was better to do the work themselves. “One, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves,” Qizilbash said. They also wanted full creative control over their IP so they could get the right team for the job.

As for what franchises get specific treatments, that’ll depend on the title. “Ultimately, the story will determine the format. We want to bring our IP to the medium that best honors the property,” Qizilbash said.

Lead image courtesy FrameStockFootages via Shutterstock

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