Amazon Studios is in talks with BioWare and Electronic Arts to produce and develop a Mass Effect television show.
“Amazon Studios is nearing a deal to develop a series based on the best-selling sci-fi video game franchise from Electronic Arts”, according to Deadline.
Not much is known as far as details on this upcoming project. As yet we do not know if it will be Live-action or animated.
Amazon is presently working on live-action TV adaptations of Bethesda’s Fallout series, but it doesn’t mean this series will be similar or even live-action.
The studio is also currently working on a very ambitious “Lord Of The Rings” TV series which will debut in September next year and which is going to cost a reported $465 mil just for its first season.
Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, said of the series:
“We know our global audience is hungry for elevated fantasy and shows based on beloved IP. You will see us continuing to invest in fantasy genre of all kinds, we have a genre-focused team on the ground in Studios who work tirelessly with our creative partners on those slates, and you can look forward to more.”
For those in the dark, Mass Effect is a highly popular Sci-Fi Action third-person shooter that was first released in November of 2007 by developer BioWare and published by Electronic Arts and Microsoft Game Studios. By January of 2008, it had sold more than half a million copies.
There have been numerous sequels and book series, as well as a poster collection, an adult coloring book, and comics, all based on the Mass Effect franchise.
Because Mass Effect has such a diverse storyline, a continuing series rather than a movie adaptation will be the best option for this popular gaming franchise. Legendary pictures tried to make a movie adaptation of Mass Effect in 2010 and it eventually got scrapped. Bioware’s Mac Walters explained why saying:
” If you’re going to tell a story that’s as fleshed out as ‘Mass Effect,’ TV is the way to do it. There’s a natural way it fits well with episodic content.”
Walters goes on to say:
“When we build out a ‘Mass Effect’ game, we have a backbone or an overall story that we want to tell, but each level or mission is like its own TV episode. It doesn’t get written ahead of time. It gets written at the time that we get to it. So it gets added to the main story and sometimes the main story gets adjusted because we did something really cool in that ‘episode.’
While there’s no confirmation that an Amazon Studios “Mass Effect” Tv series is in the works, it would certainly fit in with the company’s current pattern of bringing all types of genre-related adaptations to its service. At this point, the only thing fans can do is wait and watch what happens.