‘The Last of Us’ is neither the first nor the last series based on a video game: ‘Tomb Raider’, ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ or ‘God of War’ are also on the way.
With the arrival of ‘The Last of Us’, one of HBO’s 21 most anticipated series in 2023 to target, the platform has noted one of the first television successes of the year: it is its second best premiere in a decade, only surpassed for ‘The house of the dragon’. It might seem that predicting its success was easy, since the series came sponsored by the video game franchise on which it is based, but the difficult adaptation of ‘Resident Evil’, released on Netflix last year and canceled after only one season, demonstrated that this is not always a guarantee of success. Even so, Hollywood is not going to stop trying and, once ‘The Last of Us’ could become the best series of the year, there are many video game sagas that will soon make their leap to the small screen. Meanwhile, we wait to find out if ‘Halo’ will arrive in Spain with SkyShowtime or not.
‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ (Netflix)
If HBO Max already has its post-apocalyptic series, (here we point out the main differences between the series and the ‘The Last of Us’ video game), Netflix will have its own with the adaptation of ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’, although it presents us with completely different worlds. . In this, located in the year 3040, after an unknown catastrophe the world has changed a lot and has become the scene of tribal societies, among which are the Noras, to whom the protagonist belongs, the archer Aloy, to whom she lends a voice in her Spanish version of the video game Michelle Jenner. ‘Horizon Zero Dawn’ can also boast of being the game with the best debut of a new PlayStation 4 IP. Thus, its jump to television was inevitable: at the controls will be the creator of the series ‘Killjoys’ and ‘ Lost Girl’, Michelle Lovretta, along with ‘The Umbrella Academy’ showrunner, Steve Blackman.
‘Fallout’ (Amazon Prime Video)
And from apocalypse to apocalypse and I shoot because it’s my turn. The turn is for ‘Fallout’, an Xbox Game Studios video game that will be brought to the screen by Amazon Prime Video with a luxury team: after the cancellation of ‘Westworld’ on HBO, its creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, with whom Amazon Prime Video now has an exclusive agreement, are behind this series. Although not much has been revealed about her, it is known that filming began last June and that Walton Goggins (‘The Shield’) and Ella Purnell (‘Yellowjackets’) will star.
God of War (Amazon Prime Video)
Along with Gran Turismo and Uncharted, one of the 25 best (and worst) adaptations of video games to movies, ‘God of War’ occupies the podium of Sony’s most important video game sagas, with more than 51 million copies sold. its so far eight deliveries. And Amazon will be the platform in charge of adapting its story to television, focusing on the Nordic era of the franchise that began in 2018, with Kratos and his son Atreus as protagonists. To do this, he has put the mission in the hands of Rafe Judkins, the person in charge of season 2 of ‘The Wheel of Time’ who will be the showrunner here, as well as Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, the creators of ‘The Expanse’, the series favorite of Jeff Bezos, who will work as screenwriters.
‘Assassin’s Creed’ (Netflix)
The adaptation of ‘Assassin’s Creed’ for Netflix has been kicking for a long time. Shortly before the release of the 2016 film starring Michael Fassbender (which got pretty bad reviews), Ubisoft started talks with Netflix to expand the brand across the platform, initially with an anime series. However, in 2020, Netflix confirmed that the intention was still standing and, not only that, they had several developments in their hands, including an animated series, an anime, and a live action series. This last It had Jeb Stuart (‘Die Die’, ‘Vikings: Valhalla’) as the main scriptwriter, but at the beginning of January of this year we learned that he had left the project for creative differences. However, the project is supposed to go ahead.
‘Life is Strange’ (Hulu)
The adaptation of ‘Life is Strange’ has also been floundering for a long time. Already in 2016, Legendary Digital Studios and Square Enix announced their intention to turn the franchise into a series, beginning a search for possible writers, and a year later it was confirmed that Hulu had taken over the rights. We could consider the project dead if it weren’t for the fact that in August 2021 we had news about it again and, by the way, something strange: singer and musician Shawn Mendes was announced as executive producer of the series, in addition to being in charge of musical supervision. It is unknown if the television version will tell the original story of Max and Chloe and their time travel or a new one inspired by the premise.
‘Tomb Raider’ (Netflix)
‘Tomb Raider’ has a long history of adaptations, albeit in the form of films, with a first stage starring Angelina Jolie between 2001 and 2003 and another with Alicia Vikander in 2018 (with a sequel that never came to fruition). Now the famous archaeologist Lara Croft will live new adventures, but this time in the form of a Japanese-style anime and hand in hand with Netflix and the studio she made ‘Castelvania’. Hayley Atwell, known mainly as Peggy Carter in the MCU, will be in charge of giving voice to the heroine.
The Knuckles Series (Paramount+)
After the premiere of the animated series ‘Sonic Prime’ on Netflix, the blue hedgehog franchise continues to race, although its next stop will be on another platform. The success of the two live-action films has led Sega and Paramount to go ahead with a third film and, in addition, a series that will be seen on Paramount+ focused on the character of Knuckles and that will once again feature Idris Elbajust like in the movies, to give a voice to the red echidna.
‘Castlevania: Nocturne’ (Netflix)
The vampire saga ‘Castlevania’ was adapted by Netflix with some success in anime format and became one of the 35 best scary and horror series on Netflix to watch: in addition to getting good reviews, the series lasted a total of four seasons and, in addition, it will continue with a spin-off. ‘Castlevania: Nocture’, which is the name of the new series, will follow in the footsteps of Richter Belmont, son of Supha and Trevorand another video game character, Maria Renard, in her adventures during the French Revolution in 1792.
‘Twisted Metal’ (Peacock)
The rarest proposal among those selected is, without a doubt, the adaptation of ‘Twisted Metal’. And it is that, unlike others, it is not a game that has a clear story to adapt, but its attraction is the cars hitting each other and a rather creepy clown as the protagonist. Sony has placed this project on Peacock and will star none other than Anthony Mackie, who will star in ‘Captain America 4’. They promise us that it will be a series that mixes action with corrosive humor and all this on wheels, of course.
And a live-action of Pokémon?
In July 2021, Variety gave the exclusive that Netflix was developing a live-action Pokémon series, following the line of the movie ‘Detective Pikachu’, although it did not confirm whether it was taking up that narrative thread or characters. According to the medium, Who was in charge of the project was Joe Henderson, showrunner of ‘Lucifer’. However, the platform did not comment on it and, since then, nothing more has been known about this project. Although Netflix could be more than interested in the franchise -it has the rights to broadcast its series in multiple countries-, the thing seems to be as stopped as the sequel to ‘Detective Pikachu’.
Source: Fotogramas
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
