Rumour: Amazon Studios Close to Mass Effect TV Series Deal
Amazon Studios is said to be in talks with publisher Electronic Arts about a TV series around Mass Effect. According to Deadline, a deal is near. There has been an attempt to make a Mass Effect film in the past, but it never got off the ground.
Deadline briefly mentions the Mass Effect series in an article about The Wheel of Time, Amazon Prime’s latest fantasy series. According to Amazon, tens of millions of subscribers are watching that series. The service does not mention exact numbers, but states that the series exceeds expectations.
Amazon will continue to invest “in all kinds of fantasy genres,” Jennifer Salke, the head of Amazon Studios told Deadline. A series about Mass Effect could fall into that category, but the streaming service does not make any statements about it.
In 2010, the American film company Legendary Pictures bought the rights to make a Mass Effect film. There was a screenwriter in the picture, but the film never came. Mac Walters, writer of the Mass Effect games at BioWare and director of this year’s Legendary Edition, said in a June interview with Business Insider that it was “a fight against the story.” “What story are we going to tell in a 90 or 120 minute movie and can we do that justice?” he wondered. According to Walters, the Mass Effect franchise lends itself better to a TV series than to a movie.
In the interview, Walters also made statements about a possible TV series. According to him, the question is not if it will come, but when. “It’s such a vast world and so many people I know from the TV and film industry have approached me to ask when we’re going to do it,” he said.
The rights to Mass Effect are held by Electronic Arts. The games in the series are made by BioWare, a studio owned by EA. A new title in the series is also being worked on, but almost nothing is known about it yet.
Teaser image of new Mass Effect game