PlayStation Productions‘ goal is to make cinematic or television adaptations of their gaming library. (Ratchet & Clank might have been the test for this a few years ago…)

PlayStation Productions‘ headquarters are in Culver City, California (Sony’s headquarters are basically in California as well by this point), and it’s headed by Azad Qizilbash, and it’s supervised by Shawn Layden, the chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios. Sony Studios will only help with distribution – the production will be first-hand done by PlayStation itself!

„We’ve got 25 years of game development experience and that’s created 25 years of great games, franchises, and stories. 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. 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. It would be a lofty goal to say we’re following in their footsteps, but certainly, we’re taking inspiration from that. You can see just by watching older video game adaptations that the screenwriter or director didn’t understand that world or the gaming thing. The real challenge is, how do you take 80 hours of gameplay and make it into a movie? The answer is, you don’t. What you do is you take that ethos you write from there specifically for the film audience. You don’t try to retell the game in a movie,” Layden told Hollywood Reporter.

„Instead of licensing our IP out to studios, we felt the better approach was for us to develop and produce for ourselves. One, because we’re more familiar, but also because we know what the PlayStation community loves. For the last year and a half, two years, we’ve spent time trying to understand the industry, talking to writers, directors, producers,” said Qizilbash. “We talked to [film producer] Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Kevin Feige to really get an understanding of the industry,” Qizilbash added. He also said that whether they focus on film or television depends on the title, as the story will ultimately determine the format.

An interesting turn from Sony, but we wish the best of luck to them…

Source: Gematsu