Uncharted and The Last of Us are only the beginning of Playstation's master plan to finally break the curse of video game screen adaptations. With news late in 2020 that the Uncharted movie starring Tom Holland as a young Nathan Drake really and truly finished filming and would come out in 2021, Sony unveiled the big secret that they had not one or two but a staggering 10 Playstation IPs in development as either movies or shows. At that time, however, Uncharted and The Last of Us (which will be a show on HBO) had already been announced, and it wasn't clear if they were included in the 10.
In the last couple years, the curse of video game adaptations seems to have more or less been broken, with the unprecedented critical and commercial success of the Castlevania pseudo-anime serving as a sort of catalyst. Video game companies seem to have realized they can just cut out the middle man and get to work themselves, as Sega put a lot of their own labor into the surprise hit Sonic the Hedgehog and appear willing to do so again for the Yakuza movie currently in development. Playstation belongs to Sony, and "Playstation Productions" already exists. Before it officially came into existence, Playstation put out a decent Ratchet and Clank movie in 2016, and it looks like they're in charge of these numerous upcoming Playstation projects.
While at CES 2021, Playstation head Jim Ryan made it clear that Uncharted and The Last of Us are "just the beginning of the expansion of our storytelling into new media and even wider audiences." It appears Sony's plan is to increase the "integration" between their numerous IPs. "Sony is a creative entertainment company," Ryan would go on to say, "and entertainment has never been more important."
The goal here is obviously to reach new audiences, which in layman's terms suggests Sony wants people who don't generally play video games to instead watch their video games as movies or shows. Is that, by Jim Ryan's words, creative? Maybe not, but it's a very lucrative idea. Some of Playstation's exclusives are, sometimes to their detriment even, effectively playable movies, which makes them at once very easy and very difficult to adapt. The list of IPs to play with is a long and honored one, including but not limited to: God of War, Sly Cooper, Jak and Daxter, Shadow of the Colossus, and this year's hit Ghost of Tsushima. That comes with challenges, though.
Great stories are more often than not the core of the games Playstation's devoted developers put out, but that makes adapting them a problem. The most successful video game screen adaptations as of yet are undeniably Castlevania, and then probably Sonic. Both were based on games with minimal story, so a story written by people who understood the spirit of the games could be grafted on without much interference. Adapting a story-focused game, although it likely takes less brainpower to do the broad strokes, means having to not only match but even top the original narrative. It's clear Sony wants to appeal to people who wouldn't play these games, but why make a show or a movie that's basically the same? It's an easy tightrope to fall off of when you're adapting something from one medium to another and even showed its face when Disney tried 1:1 live-action translations of their animated classics. Then again, those all profited, so maybe Sony doesn't really care if fans of their games like their film and TV alternatives. Uncharted and The Last of Us are, after all, just the beginning.
Source: CES 2021
