Final Fantasy XIV To Fuel New Sony Television Project
by Erik Amaya
Cue up the victory theme, Final Fantasy is headed to television.
Sony Pictures Television, Square Enix and Hivemind, the production company behind The Expanse and the upcoming Witcher series, are developing a Final Fantasy program for television. According to The Hollywood Reporter, it will “center on an original story set in the world of Eorzea,” the world from Final Fantasy XIV. The project will likely be shopped to Amazon Studios as part of Hivemind’s first look deal with the streamer.
Though set on Eorzea, the series is said to include elements from all of the Final Fantasy games, so get ready to see Chocobos and some version of Cid in live action. And the creative is no doubt thinking up ways to include Sephiroth into the proceedings.
The character appeared in a Final Fantasy VII animated film, Advent Children, in 2007. It was part of an effort on Sony and Square Enix’s part to diversify Final Fantasy beyond the video game realm. The initiative included the shockingly dull feature film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within and the 2017 animated feature Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV, a prequel to the Final Fantasy XV video game. The new series will be the first attempt to bring the concept to the live action realm.
And really, it is only in the 2020s that a concept like Final Fantasy could be realized in live action, what with its mix of magic, technology, Chocobos and other fantastic creatures. Hopefully, this will work out better than Spirits Within, which lacked all of the franchise’s fantasy trappings.