That Sonic The Hedgehog movie is all anyone wants to talk about, so video game movies are obviously a big deal once again. Perhaps with that in mind, Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced a new film and TV production studio called PlayStation Productions that will be dedicated to developing adaptations of Sony’s video games. The label will be run by Asad Qizilbash and SIE boss Shawn Layden, and The Hollywood Reporter has a quote from Layden about using the company’s 25 years of game development experience to “look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television to give our worlds life in another spectrum.”
That’s some fancy talk, but the more meaningful explanation comes from Qizilbash, who says that the goal is to allow Sony to avoid licensing out its properties and instead use its experience from determining what video game fans will like to try and determine what movie fans will like. If that sounds like a familiar approach, maybe one that was recently used to great success by a company with a name that rhymes with Shmarvel, the Hollywood Reporter story specifically notes that Layden and Qizilbash have spent the last few years talking with producers like Kevin Feige to learn how to understand the movie industry. Nobody is throwing around the words “cinematic universe” just yet, but you don’t talk to Kevin Feige unless you’ve got plans.
As for what those plans may entail, the story mentions Tomb Raider, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro The Dragon, Metal Gear Solid, Uncharted, God Of War, The Last Of Us, and Ratchet & Clank as examples of video games that were very successful on various PlayStation platforms, but it’s worth pointing out that Sony Interactive Entertainment actually owns very few of those. Also, an Uncharted movie is already in development from a different studio, so Nathan Drake won’t be joining Sony’s Avengers any time soon, but PlayStation Productions should be free to use God Of War, The Last Of Us, and things that weren’t mentioned up above like Bloodborne, Shadow Of The Colossus, and unpopular chatroom thing PlayStation Home.