It was first announced all the way back in 2010 that beloved sci-fi series Mass Effect was being turned into a movie. Fast forward 11 years and, uh, no movie.
The project was only officially cancelled (at least in terms of a public announcement) earlier this year, when BioWare’s Mac Walters revealed that Legendary Pictures had finally walked away from the project. “It felt like we were always fighting the IP,” he explained. “What story are we going to tell in 90 to 120 minutes? Are we going to do it justice?”
Probably not! Which might explain why, with the decade-long attempt to turn the games into a movie (or three) dead in the water, Deadline is reporting that Amazon is now “nearing a deal” to turn it into an expensive TV show instead.
Tucked away in a story that’s otherwise about the debut of Amazon’s new fantasy series, Wheel of Time, is this short bit from Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke:
One of the company’s newest hopefuls in the arena is Mass Effect. Amazon Studios is nearing a deal to develop a series based on the best-selling sci-fi video game franchise from Electronic Arts.
“You will see us continuing to invest in fantasy genre of all kinds, we have a genre-focused team on the ground in Studios who work tirelessly with our creative partners on those slates, and you can look forward to more,” Salke said.
Makes sense. Amazon’s current sci-fi series, The Expanse, is about to air its sixth and final season, leaving a spaceship-sized hole in the streaming service’s lineup. And a live-action Commander Shepard, zipping around the galaxy making friends, saving planets, and occasionally committing war crimes, would be much better able to tell their story over the course of a TV series, than crammed into a movie.