Move over, Fallout! A Mass Effect TV show is finally on the way
… With Fast & Furious 9 writer and Borderlands producer on the team… gulp
It’s time for all you Garrus stans to go mainstream — after many years of rumours, a Mass Effect TV show is finally in the works.
Amazon MGM Studios is putting the show together (meaning it’ll almost certainly end up an Amazon Prime Video exclusive show), with Daniel Casey set to write and executive produce, and Ari Arad also set to executive produce, according to Variety.
Daniel Casey is best known for his work writing the Fast & Furious 9 screenplay, while Ari Arad has a… chequered history with big screen gaming adaptations. Arad produced the so-so Uncharted film and the woeful flop Borderlands.
But he was also executive producer on the original Iron Man movie, if that helps balance the scales. Side note — he’s also the producer on the long-gestating Metal Gear Solid video game adaptation, too.
Rounding out the production team is executive producer Karim Zriek via Cedar Tree Productions, and EA’s Michael Gamble, acting as executive producer and representing the series’ gaming publishers.
An ambitious adaptation
The Mass Effect series kicked off in 2007, with an initial trilogy of games following a human soldier and their rag-tag crew out to save the galaxy from a nefarious alien race called the Reapers. The first three titles are regarded as role-playing game classics, but a 2017 follow-up, conceived as the beginning of its own trilogy, was poorly received. Developers Bioware are now hard at work on a fifth game.
Long rumoured for a feature-length live-action adaptation, Mass Effect’s rich storytelling, lore-filled universe and space-opera style drama is better suited to longer-form TV’s episodic nature. But it’ll take some budget to satisfyingly pull off the ambitious sci-fi action the games are known for.
Another hurdle to leap will be the way the games are designed to let the player lead the story — with their decision not only shaping the narrative, but being remembered and reflected in the action across multiple titles.
But another recent Amazon Prime Video hit, the Fallout TV show, had to battle the same issue, and did so with aplomb, making for one of the best series of the year, and an excellent gaming adaptation.
Amazon’s game adaptation ambitions also extend to a series based around Sony’s long-running God of War franchise, also in pre-production for a streaming show.
Mass Effect is in the earliest stages of production, so no plot, casting or release date details are ready to be shared yet. But we’ll be following the development of this one very closely.