Posted in: Games, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Video Games | Tagged: Asad Qizilbash, PlayStation Productions, Shawn Layden, SIE, sony, Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony Launching New Division to Adapt Games into Movies and TV

Sony Interactive has launched a new unit designed to take Sony's existing games properties, which numbers at over 100 unique IPs, and adapt them into movies and TV shows. The new unit, called PlayStation Productions, will be headed by Asad Qizilbash and overseen by Sony Interactive Entertainment Chairman of Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden. This differs from Sony's previous ventures into video game adaptations, as these projects will be made entirely in-house.

PlayStation Productions will also see collaboration with Sony Pictures for distribution of the movies and shows. That said, production of any game adaptations from PlayStation Productions will be done entirely first-hand.

From The Hollywood Reporter:

"We've got 25 years of game development experience and that's created 25 years of great games, franchises and stories," Layden tells The Hollywood Reporter. "We feel that now is a good time to look at other media opportunities across streaming or film or television to give our worlds life in another spectrum."

With a library of more than 100 original properties ranging from adventure to sci-fi to action to mystery to horror, PlayStation Productions has a wide breadth of content ripe for adaptation. "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 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 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."

Now, the idea of a Sony Cinematic Universe is actually a little bit horrifying. Mainly because the idea of somehow combining games like Uncharted, The Last of Us, and God of War into one consistent universe makes absolutely no sense. And at the same time, it makes perfect sense. In a really, really horrible way.

Granted, Layden does admit that trying to follow in the footsteps of the MC is "a lofty goal," but the idea is clearly there for PlayStation Productions to follow should things go well.

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