Earlier in the summer, news broke that Sony was going to bring its sci-fi RPG franchise Horizon Zero Dawn to the small screen via a Netflix adaptation. Watching post-apocalyptic humans battle big-ass robot animals sounds like something that could work as both a game and a TV concept, and Sony’s eager to test that theory. No creative staff was unveiled at the time, but thanks to some news earlier in the week, we know who’ll be running the show on this...well, show.
Specifically, Deadline reports that Steve Blackman and Michelle Lovretta will handle showrunning duties for the series. If you watched SyFy during the 2010s, her name will sound familiar, as she created the series’ Lost Girl (2010-2015) and Killjoys (2015-2019). Both shows ran for five seasons a piece.
As for Blackman, he’s the current showrunner of Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, which was recently announced to be ending with its upcoming fourth season. Horizon is part of an overall multi-year deal Blackman made with Netflix, so via his production banner Irish Cowboy, he’ll serve as co-creator and writer for both this and a thriller series called Orbital from brothers David and Keith Lynch. “Horizon Zero Dawn and Orbital are elevated, event-level projects grounded in characters that fans will love and relate to, which are hallmarks of Irish Cowboy productions,” wrote Blackman in a statement to Deadline.
“Guerrilla Games has created an incredibly lush and vivid world of man and machine who find themselves on a collision course to oblivion,” continued Blackman over on Netflix’s Tudum blog. It was there where he confirmed that Aloy, the lead character from the games voiced by Ashly Burch, will serve as the show’s main character. And the show will be in live-action, if there were ever any doubt. To bring the games’ numerous mechanical beasts to life, all of whom have names like “Dreadwing” or “Slaughterspine,” Blackman said the production crew would use “the newest technologies” for the show.
The original Horizon Zero Dawn released in 2017 to great reviews and sales, and its sequel Forbidden West came out earlier this year to about the same. Whether you’ve only played one of the two games or both of them, you know that there’s plenty of interesting (and also completely bonkers) sci-fi nonsense in them that could make a show potentially interesting. Netflix has a solid track record with video game shows specifically, but not with genre fare more broadly. This could either be a rousing success, but it could just as equally be a pretty short dawn.
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