‘God Of War’ To Join Amazon’s Prime Video Galaxy Of Fantasy TV Shows
by Erik Amaya
Now it seems Amazon wants all the fantasy out there, too.
Deadline reports the company’s Prime Video service is in talks to produce a live action television program based on the God of War video game series. Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, creators of The Expanse, and The Wheel of Time showrunner Rafe Judkins are said to be working on the adaptation with Sony Pictures Television and PlayStation Productions on board as producers.
As the site notes, this is the third high-profile game series Amazon hopes to convert into streaming gold, the other two being Fallout and Mass Effect. But we also can’t help but notice how God of War — particularly if they use the story of the current game cycle — fits into Prime Video’s push for fantasy shows like The Wheel of Time and September’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Indeed, Amazon has been chasing this goal for some time, optioning material like Conan, sci-fi novels like Gateway, and pushing hard to make The Boys a success. The real goal is a Game of Thrones style success.
God of War could prove to do that in a very literal way. The game series, which began in 2005, was known for its nudity and graphic violence. The more recent series, which began in 2018, saw lead character Kratos adjusting to fatherhood and scaling back some of his excesses. Well, the ones having to do with sex, anyway. And considering “edgy” sexual content in a fantasy setting was part of the Game of Thrones formula, we could see this show going back to the days when Kratos was just a Spartan looking for revenge on Ares, the God of War, and working all the way through his journey to becoming the God of War himself, leaving Greece, and caring for a child who may or may not lead to the end of all things.
Or, maybe, they’ll just skip to the current story as it satisfies the four-quad demo in a way something littered with nudity and dismemberment just doesn’t.
As with all newly announced film and TV projects, it is unclear how quickly God of War will appear on Prime Video, but we have to admit their commitment to fantasy is something worth celebrating.