It is a truth universally acknowledged that, right now, video game adaptations are all the rage. The latest Sonic The Hedgehog movie took that franchise past $1 billion at the box office, The Super Mario Bros. Movie took over a billion dollars on its own, and small screen fare like The Last Of Us, Fallout, and The Witcher have brought critical acclaim alongside commercial success. It's a trend that Sony and PlayStation Productions have clearly been paying close attention to, as they just announced cinematic takes on Horizon: Zero Dawn and Helldivers — and a new Ghost Of Tsushima anime series — at their CES 2025 presentation last night.
On an evening that also saw Sony unveil a new look at The Last Of Us Season 2 and confirm that David F Sandberg's upcoming Until Dawn movie will hit cinemas this April, the trifecta of big name new project announcements came as something of a surprise. Details on each of the projects are relatively scarce at this time, but we were given tidbits of info on each. The Horizon movie, which seemingly will replace Netflix's previously announced series adaptation of the open-world sci-fi RPG, was unveiled onstage by PlayStation Productions head Asad Qizilbash, who told the gathered crowd, "Just imagine Aloy's beloved origin story set in a vibrant far-future world filled with the giant machines brought to you for the first time on the big screen." Of the Helldivers movie, all we know thus far is that the film — which could be live-action or animated at this point — will take its cues from 2024's wildly popular Helldivers II, whose heavily Starship Troopers inspired brand of military satire, alien bugs, and ultra violence seems a natural fit for the cinematic treatment.
As for the Ghost Of Tsushima project, which is being developed with anime streaming giant Crunchyroll, we know a little bit more. As Crunchyroll's blog reveals, Sucker Punch Productions' 2021 samurai epic game — which has a sequel, Ghost Of Yotei, already in the works — is set to hit the streamer exclusively in 2027. What's more, the anime, inspired both by the first Ghost Of... game and its multiplayer Legends mode, is set to be helmed by Takanobu Mizuno, the director behind Star Wars: Visions standout instalment 'The Duel'. It joins the likes of Arcane and Tomb Raider: The Legend Of Lara Croft in a recent trend of Japanese animation and anime-adjacent takes on popular game franchises.
With a tantalising trio of samurai, sci-fi, and shoot-em-up adaptations in the works and no signs of the recent video game film and TV trend slowing anytime soon (we will be seeing Jack Black yearn for the mines in all his bearded glory in A Minecraft Movie mere months from now), a new (some would argue first) golden age for pad-to-motion-picture offerings is here. For now though, we'll just have to wait and see whether Horizon: Zero Dawn, Helldivers, and Ghost Of Tsushima raise their peers' game or leave us rage quitting.