Amazon’s TV series adaptation of PlayStation’s popular God of War video games is said to be starting from scratch.
As first reported by Deadline and corroborated by Variety, Amazon and Sony are rebooting the series after the departure of showrunner and executive producer Rafe Judkins (The Wheel of Time) and executive producers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus (The Expanse). Per the publications, this came down to the usual “creative differences” explanation we hear in Hollywood, although it’s unclear exactly what that might have entailed here.
Going forward, Amazon will have to hire a new showrunner and writers’ room. Apparently, multiple scripts had already been written by the old creative team that will be scrapped as part of the creative overhaul. The only holdovers will be the producing team: Cory Barlog and Yumi Yang (creative director and studio head at God of War developer Sony Santa Monica), Asad Qizilbash and Carter Swan (Sony’s video game adaptation division, PlayStation Productions) and Roy Lee (production company Vertigo).
The God of War series was originally announced in December 2022. At the time, Amazon only confirmed the involvement of the showrunner and executive producers and the fact that the series will be based on the two recent God of War games, which are based on Norse mythology. The original PS2 and PS3 God of War games took place in Greece.
The series’ latest games, 2018’s God of War and 2022’s God of War Ragnarök, follow Spartan warrior Kratos as he attempts to leave his violent past behind to raise his son, Atreus, only to get drawn into a larger conflict with the Norse gods. It remains to be seen how closely the series will follow the story of these two games or even who will play Kratos, Atreus and the other characters.
For instance, Amazon’s other big video game adaptation, Fallout, is faithful to the eponymous Bethesda series upon which it’s based but tells an original story in that universe. On the flip side, HBO’s The Last of Us, another PlayStation Productions adaptation, very closely retells the story of the Naughty Dog video games.
Hopefully, we’ll learn more about the God of War series soon.
Image credit: PlayStation
Source: Deadline
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