Movies based on Helldivers and Horizon: Zero Dawn are in the works at PlayStation Productions, as well as a Ghost Of Tsushima anime.
Sony held a press conference at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show and unveiled several new projects that will release via the PlayStation Productions arm of Sony Pictures.
The mini-studio was set up a few years ago to mine Sony’s immense back catalogue of videogame titles and adapt them for film and television. Since the release of Uncharted in 2022, starring Tom Holland and Mark Wahlberg, that particular arm of Sony Pictures has been busy mounting new projects.
Now it seems more are on the way, with the company using this year’s CES to unveil three new productions.
First up, we’ll be getting a Helldivers film. One of last year’s most successful releases, Helldivers 2 is a multiplayer horde shooter that, on its release in the first quarter of 2024, became PlayStation Studios fastest-selling game of all time with a whopping 12 million copies sold in 12 weeks.
The game sees you team up with friends, randoms or going solo, ‘helldiving’ (named after the small pods that dispatch your fearless trooper planetside) into situations where, to paraphrase an entirely different cinematic dystopia, the odds may never be in your favour.
Read more: Helldivers 2 | The saviour of live service gaming?
Endless hordes of enemies that look like skeletal Cyberdyne terminators or the bugs from Starship Troopers try their best to murder you and often succeed. Even if they don’t, your teammates probably will, with accidental team-killing often being a frustrating (and hilarious) feature of the game.
Helldivers borrows heavily from the sci-fi satire of Paul Verhoven’s 1998 film Starship Troopers for its atmosphere and narrative, so it’s likely the film will follow a similar tone.
A Horizon : Zero Dawn film was also announced by Sony (via Dark Horizons), which will adapt world and characters established in 2017’s game of the same name. It followed Aloy, a young outsider who sets out with her bow and arrow to discover the truth behind her post-apocalyptic world which is chock-full of deadly robot dinosaurs.
Previous films based on Sony’s properties have so far included Uncharted, HBO series The Last Of Us and Neill Blomkamp’s racing movie, Gran Turismo. Sony isn’t stopping there though, with an Until Dawn adaptation coming, along with takes on Gravity Rush, Days Gone, God Of War, Uncharted 2 and a Ghost Of Tsushima film all in various stages of development.
Sony also announced at CES that Ghost Of Tsushima will be getting an anime series, which is aiming for a 2027 release. There was no word as to whether it would tie in to John Wick director Chad Stahelski’s planned live action take on the samurai adventure game. We’ll bring you more regarding Sony’s game adaptations when we hear more.
