Sony’s God of War TV show currently in-development at Amazon is reportedly getting a reboot two years after it was first announced. The adaptation has lost its showrunner and head producer as the companies reportedly look to take the existing scripts in a different creative direction.
Showrunner Rafe Judkins (Wheel of Time) and executive producers Hawk Ostby (The Expanse) and Mark Fergus (Children of Men) have departed the project, Variety reports. Despite “multiple completed scripts,” both Sony and Amazon apparently decided to take the planned show in a new direction that effectively precipitated a complete reboot of the project.
First teased back in 2022, Amazon promised the God of War TV show would be “incredibly true” to the PlayStation games that it’s based on, including that year’s critically-acclaimed God of War Ragnarök. While that game’s director, Cory Barlog, remains an executive producer on the project, the rest of the creative leadership seems to no longer be attached.
“So what [showrunners] Rafe Judkins and Mark Fergus and [writer] Hawk Ostby have come up with for the first season, and for the series, I think, is both incredibly true to the source material, and also compelling on its own,” Vernon Sanders, head of Amazon TV, said at the time. “So we think it’s going to be huge.” Apparently not!
This is the second PlayStation adaptation to hit rough waters despite the success of HBO’s The Last Of Us, which is currently prepping for its season 2 return in 2025. A Horizon Zero Dawn TV adaptation for Netflix is also reportedly in trouble after Steve Blackman was reportedly removed earlier this year for toxic behavior. As of now the project is apparently dead, at least at Netflix.
Sony appears undeterred by these hiccups, however. It’s already announced transmedia ambitions for Ghost of Yotei, it’s Tsushima successor that’s not even out yet. The samurai gaming story will reportedly get “at least one movie and other spinoffs.”