Sony Reveals It's Post-SUMC Plans

Last month, the Sony Universe of Marvel Characters was unceremoniously put out of its misery after Sony's repeated attempts to force the movie-going public to watch origin stories for Spider-Man's most famous movies. The problem with that is this left a major void in Sony's cinematic slate since they've had an issue with franchise-building outside their Spider-Man-adjacent movies. Yesterday at CES, Sony revealed that their plan to replace these movies is to lean into their adaptation of PlayStation properties.

Starting out with the obvious, The Last of Us season two will be coming in April and will not be adapting the entirety of The Last of Us Part II. This will be on Hbo and Max, same as last season.

The Netflix adaptation of Horizon: Zero Dawn was canceled last year. The adaptation of the game is still coming, it will just be a theatrical release rather than streaming. It is in early development from Columbia Pictures, no writer or director has been attached.

There is a theatrical adaptation of Until Dawn coming out in April as well, directed by David F. Sandberg of Shazam!: Fury of the Gods fame. I forgot this was a thing and haven't played the game but it's horror and Sandberg did direct the Annabelle movies so it could be good.

A Helldivers 2 movie is also in development, which is great because people who don't have the media literacy to understand Starship Troopers is a satire, or that the game Helldivers 2 itself is a satire, will get to watch it in a theater and still be confused. Keep in mind, there were morons who thought that Dune Part II had a conservative message and that Paul Atredies is a hero and an aspirational figure.

Finally, Crunchyroll is adapting Ghosts of Tsushima as an anime for release in 2027 from Takanobu Mizuno who directed The Duel from the first season of Star Wars: Visions. There has been no word about the theatrical live-action film in development from John Wick director Chad Stahelski.

I think there are a few notable franchises missing here and it's weird that they're omitted. I seem to recall there is a God of War adaptation in the works at Amazon so I'm unsure as to why that wasn't addressed. The same goes for a potential Uncharted sequel which was also not addressed in this conference. There's a lack of more family-friendly content and it's a little odd that there is no Astro Bot or Little Big Planet/Sack Boy. My personal choice would be Wipeout but that's never going to happen.

Regardless, this could be a better long-term solution for Sony as try to move away from the SUMC. Video game adaptations have started to become popular and there is a new expectation of quality that is not dissimilar from say 2008-2010 of the superhero genre. Sony may be uniquely situated to option dormant third-party titles to supplement their own lengthy catalog of first-party titles. We will see how this pans out.