The video game adaptations cannot be stopped. A new season of The Witcher has been on the way forever. The Last of Us returns in April. I don’t even want to talk about the number of Sonic the Hedgehog movies that will probably exist ten years from now. Tomb Raider has become several movies, an animated series, and an upcoming live-action series. This is only the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg is growing: Sony has announced that it’s developing movie adaptations of Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2.
If the Horizon Zero Dawn adaptation sounds familiar, that’s likely because a series adaptation of the game was announced back in 2022. At that time it was in development with Netflix, but it sounds like that one is off the table. Now, according to Variety, “Columbia Pictures and Sony PlayStation are working on a movie adaptation.”
Horizon Zero Dawn is set in a future in which humanity is barely scraping by, living as hunter-gatherers and trying to survive the Machines, which Sony describes as “fearsome mechanical creatures of unknown origin.” The game, and presumably the film, follow a woman named Aloy who “embarks on a journey to discover her destiny.” As one does.
The development of the film is literally all the Sony officials announced; there’s no word on writer, director, timeline, or anything else. The same goes for Helldivers 2: It’s being developed as a live-action film. The third-person, alien-and-robot shooting game was immensely popular when released last year; Variety notes that it sold 12 million copies in just 12 weeks.
The game has drawn comparisons to another story about killing big bugs in space. As Kotaku points out, “Of course, Helldivers 2, a militaristic parody of a futuristic fascist empire fighting off alien invaders, is sort of already a movie. It’s called Starship Troopers, the Paul Verhoeven action comedy based on the sci-fi novel by Robert Heinlein.”
At least one other major Sony game adaptation is still looming: God of War, which was first announced in 2022 with showrunner Rafe Judkins (The Wheel of Time) and a story developed by The Expanse’s Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. In October, news broke that the trio had parted ways with Amazon MGM Studios and Sony. A week later, Ronald D. Moore, of Battlestar Galactica and Outlander, took the helm.
We’ll just have to see which of these games makes it to the small or larger screens first.
