Amazon Studios has maintained that its upcoming “God of War” TV show will stay very close in its story to the video games.
Amazon Studios Head of TV Vernon Sanders told Collider that the God of War TV show will tell a story about “fathers and sons,” referencing Kratos and his son Atreus. This dynamic will set against a “giant epic landscape,” Sanders teased.
What the showrunners and writers have come up for the God of War TV series is “incredibly true to the source material, and also compelling on its own,” Sanders said.
Amazon last week confirmed that the project would be happening, after months of speculation.
The PlayStation series features Kratos, a god-like Spartan warrior, running around the world killing everything. Recent games have aged him up and given him a son, changing the tone of the series and helping make it more popular than ever.
Sanders added: “If you never played the game, you will fall in love with the show and feel very much invited in. So we think it’s going to be huge.”
“We know that there’s such a passionate fanbase for God of War,” Sanders said in the interview. “But the thing that we’re always looking for is whether there is a real emotional core, if there’s a real narrative story, and I think [that’s] part of what makes God of War so special.”
Other video game to TV adaptations in the past have been criticized for drifting away from the source material, such as Netflix’s “Resident Evil.”
“Wheel of Time’s” Rafe Judkins is the showrunner for the “God of War” TV series. Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, who wrote “Iron Man” and “Children of Men”, are writers and executive producers on the show. Cory Barlog, who directed 2018’s God of War, is an executive producer as well.
No casting announcements have been made thus far, but Christopher Judge, who plays Kratos in the game series, is reportedly lobbying to play the character on the show too.
