Sony to Turn Horizon Zero Dawn into a Movie, Not a TV Show

I can only imagine that a Horizon TV show would watch like bloated, formulaic, trash, hurtling through multiple seasons of waffle. People want to chase the 'ever green' road of always having content to feed and sell the audience, but, much like the live service industry- there's already a lot of that, and if you don't have the pull, you've failed. A film is much less risky, in a sense.

I Think Sony Should turn this into an Animated Film Rather than live Action.

Ok this will work way more than that God of War TV show in my honest opinion,

TV show, for a number of subjective reasons. The production team would have more freedom of creativity on a TV show than on a movie. It's gotten to the point now that movie execs send people to sit-in on a set and make sure their 'vision' is what's portrayed on screen, it takes away from the director and the rest of the crew resulting in a more sterile and by the books experience. That kind of shadowing wears people out and it becomes a paycheck, nothing else.

It's not like that with TV shows, it's more relaxed and the people there care more about the IP or franchise they are hired to work on. When it comes to video game movies/shows studios tend to inject their own ideas into a movie and when it comes to a TV show they pull in people who understand the franchise (most times) Technical advisors were once a more important part of the movie/filming process, now it's a lot more cooperate and even political. Ideally when it comes to a video-game adaption you want someone who's at least played said game, that doesn't always happen, and it's happening even less with movies. The folks at the top don't care about the source material, and sometimes never even heard of it.

I've always had a blast on TV sets it's a great mix of people who want to be there and the love of the job translates into the finished piece. Actors put in better performances, everything shines. Movies have gone the other way so even if a great franchise like Borderlands gets green-lit it can often be ruined by not honoring the source material.

I've always loved HZD, playing it did feel like going through chapters of a story, those chapters if done right would work great for TV. A major studio would mean a bigger budget but budget doesn't always mean quality. I hope whichever way it goes they do it right. I'd be happy with it just being a game, but it does make sense for Sony to adapt it to the big or small screen especially since they have the infrastructure in-place to streamline it in-house.

This'll be the ultimate test of whether this franchise is as popular as Sony thinks it is/wants it to be. Will it prove the massive investment true or will it become yet another Horizon spin-off flop?

I'm getting Deja Vue. Wasn't this already confirmed off the back of the shows initial axing?

@LifeGirl You mean Hermen right?

Not a fan of the Horizon focus over the past few years.
Probably part of the abysmally ***** management from Hulst.

I think Sony should start making games again

Not sure if movie is the right format to adapt a 30 hours RPG. But i guess we'll see...

@LifeGirl Films/tv of games and games of films/tv should never be assumed to be indicative of popularity of their source material. It's not even a question of quality alone, because sometimes games and movies work because of the pros of their media, and just having the right story isn't enough.

The TLOU series wasn't popular because the game was popular, it was popular because it was well executed for both fans and newcomers. Same for Fallout.

This story is mostly 9 months old... what I don't understand is why Todd Howard is part of the story. The Fallout Series had almost no connection other than broad world-building to the game... so if that's the direction that a Horizon movie takes,,,, then can we just stop using the Horizon Zero Dawn concept? Edit - I think it would be perfectly fine if they just called it "Horizon".... "Worlds?"... there's a lot of overall lore they can explore - but I just don't think Aloy's story stands up by itself. Remember (I have to put a public disclaimer on every comment) that it's ok if you enjoy the whole story/acting/scripting.... we all have different opinions.

To be honest (in my opinion) - if any creative show-runner read/saw the story beats from HFW, then I am not surprised they had "creative differences"... what might work as a game, definitely doesn't necessarily work as a TV series.

It's gonna be ass

@LifeGirl

This'll be the ultimate test of whether this franchise is as popular as Sony thinks it is/wants it to be

I guess Monster Hunter is completely dead as a franchise then…

This definitely suits a movie more than a TV show I like this decision

Please, let Neill Blomkamp direct and produce! This style of movie is made for him!

@ChrisDeku well said. Same with Death Note and the rest.

Definitely a better choice. A focused three act plot and theme to go with. As a TV show they'd probably just stretch the entire goody two shoe plot to a drag.

I actually think the post-apocalyptic world of Horizon is a great setting for storytelling in a TV series. However, as the two main games revolve around the character Aloy, I think a movie will work better for telling her specific story and establishing the world and its history. So maybe a movie to start and then spin-off TV series if it does well. I guess it would be kind of similar to how other big franchises have done it (one small example being Andor was an offshoot of Rogue One) and both a movie and a TV show could exist and complement one another. But as others have said, the quality of the production is the main necessary ingredient. Many good IP’s have been butchered by bad movies and TV adaptations.

There absolutely is a way to make it work, but like pretty much any film, execution in all areas must be near perfect: casting, writing, directing, marketing.

I think it needs to have an amazing trailer that awes the general movie-going public rather than relying on fans of the games. The aim must be to emulate that palpable public reaction to the first Transformers (2007) trailer all those years ago.

And revamp Aloy's character from the boring, invulnerable plank she is in the games. In fact, character work must be bettered across the board. It is an IP that would benefit from some changes.

Only tease the lore, less is more, show how dangerous this world is while making it feel like an exciting place you would want to exist in, and DON'T use this as a canvas to lecture the great unwashed.

MAKE FILMS ESCAPISM AGAIN.

They need to write a character with some actual depth if they want to turn this series into something worthwhile. Aloy's frightfully bland as a protagonist.

Wonder what the budget will look like.

@ChrisDeku True. Add Final Fantasy, AssCreed, Super Mario, Doom, Far Cry, Max Payne, Hitman, and Tekken because their 1st theatrical movie was a flop. But here we are years later from those movies and the franchise are still doing well.

Definitely a film starring Zendaya.

About making more Playstation exclusive sony.word up son

Knowing the luck of the draw with this franchise, the movie will drop the same day as the next Avatar sequel

Didnt they announce this a while ago?

@Starkei

Hope so. Love some Zendaya. Pretty much everyone does.

1. Hire Studio Mir
2. Make it into an Anime

It’s a lot cheaper, lets you use the voice actors from the games and still lets you do the whole story properly. Horizon is too expensive on CGI to make live action.

Does anyone really care about the Horizon franchise? Personally I don't understand why Sony keeps ramming it down our throats.

Think you can still do a good show, at a much cheaper budget if you tackle ted faro and his company's rise and eventual cause of the plague.

The plot of HZD is such a boring mishmash of various sci-fi cliches, it's hard to imagine this not being mediocre, regardless of the format.

The size of the story could easily be adapted into a 3 movie set like Lord Of The Rings

Good. This needs a big movie budget. From my understanding, one of the most appealing aspects of this franchise is in its visuals.

So let's go the big screen !

The trouble is that I believe the only people who would be interested in seeing a Horizon film adaptation are those people who have enjoyed the games.

I also feel that condensing the lore and the story into a film that was at most three hours long - it would make it a complete muddle. Watering down the convoluted plot of a forty-hour science fiction archaeofuturist game into a movie length experience, seems like an impossible task.

And making that plot into a feature film that the general public (those without experience of the source material) want to see?

I fear that to me this all sounds like a waste of time.

A perfect parallel would be the recent Dune films. A monumental epic of a novel, made into a pair of films that are over six hours long. And they still took liberties with the plot. And if you have not read the book, then large portions of dialogue (specialist terminology) just sounds like gibberish.