Sony’s ‘Walking Dead Meets Sons Of Anarchy’ Is A Hit Show Waiting To Happen
There’s no such thing as a guaranteed hit in Hollywood — a few years ago, no one would’ve expected a Mandalorian movie and a Supergirl movie and a Masters of the Universe movie to all underperform (well, that last one never stood a chance) — but some I.P.s are a safer bet than others. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms shorts, for example, are viral sensations, cheap to produce, and the whole concept is deeply cinematic and atmospheric, so there was a good chance a big-screen adaptation directed by Parsons himself would be a huge hit (although just how huge it turned out to be was very impressive). Between Arcane and Fallout and The Last of Us, Hollywood has gotten some of its biggest TV hits of the past few years out of popular video game franchises. The long-form storytelling and worldbuilding and character development of a game like God of War or Tomb Raider are tailor-made to the kind of big-budget blockbuster shows that HBO and Netflix and Amazon have been focusing on in recent years. While Cyberpunk 2077 has been turned into a great little anime show and Ghost of Tsushima is being turned into a movie, one of Sony’s more underrated open-world RPGs — the 2019 disaster Days Gone — is just sitting there, waiting to be turned into a hit TV series. Although its many bugs and interminably boring gameplay features tanked its reception, Days Gone has all the pieces of a smash-hit television drama.
Days Gone’s Movie Adaptation Has Stalled In Development Hell
Deacon St. John fighting off ravenous wolves in Days Gone.
I’m not the first person to think of the bright idea to bring Days Gone to the screen. Almost immediately after the game came out, there was talk of a possible movie adaptation. In 2022, a film adaptation of Days Gone was officially announced to be in the works, with PlayStation Productions and Vendetta Productions on the hook. At the time, we heard that Sam Heughan was in talks to play the lead role as Deacon St. John, but he wasn’t even officially cast, and we haven’t had a single update since then. The sequel to the game is moot — the Days Gone 2 pitch got rejected by Sony — so the movie adaptation may have suffered the same fate. But honestly, I think Days Gone is better suited to a TV show than a movie. Days Gone takes place across a sprawling, zombie-infested wasteland, where Deacon — a biker tearing from town to town in search of his presumed-dead-but-maybe-not wife Sarah — is torn between various different factions all in conflict with each other, like Yojimbo. Deacon’s search for Sarah leads him into all-out war with a terrifying cult. You couldn’t possibly fit all that story into a feature film; it needs to be a TV show.
Days Gone has all the ingredients of a Walking Dead-style zombie drama, with the narrative hook of a desperate man searching the post-apocalyptic wasteland for his missing wife. The writing isn’t as strong as The Last of Us, but there’s enough depth in that core narrative that a talented showrunner could turn it into a great action-packed TV drama about zombie-slaying bikers: The Walking Dead meets Sons of Anarchy.
Video Game Adaptations Are Hollywood’s Favorite New Commodity
Jack Black looking at a block in Minecraft movie
A few years ago, Hollywood was pumping out superhero movies like it was nobody’s business, and making billions of dollars hand over fist. But now that superheroes have lost their draw, Hollywood is finding that audiences are gravitating more toward video game adaptations.
The Batman co-writer Mattson Tomlin recently tweeted that he now gets offered five times more jobs working on video game adaptations than comic book adaptations, marking a tide shift in Tinseltown’s priorities. Days Gone could follow in the footsteps of Mario and Sonic and Borderlands and Until Dawn and make the leap to our screens.
Days Gone
Systems
6/10
Released
April 26, 2019
ESRB
M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language
Developer(s)
Bend Studio
Publisher(s)
Sony
Engine
Unreal Engine 4
Diterbitkan : 2026-07-07 21:06:00
sumber : screenrant.com
