A television adaptation of developer BioWare's popular Mass Effect video game franchise could hit Prime Video in the not-too-distant future.
According to Deadline, Amazon Studios hopes to develop a series based on Mass Effect, and is currently "nearing a deal" with franchise publisher Electronic Arts (EA) in order to accomplish just that. This news follows the incredibly successful premiere of Amazon Studios' series adaptation of The Wheel of Time, which premiered on Prime Video on Nov. 19.
Should the deal come to fruition, Amazon's planned Mass Effect TV series would join Prime Video's ever-growing lineup of original programming, which currently includes shows like The Boys, Hunters, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Invincible and, of course, The Wheel of Time. Amazon Studios is also working on a big-budget Lord of the Rings prequel series, which is slated to premiere on Prime Video on Sept. 2, 2022. A Mass Effect show would also join the growing list of big-budget series adaptations of video games, such as Paramount+'s upcoming adaptation of Halo and HBO's upcoming adaptation of The Last of Us.
Developed by BioWare and published by Microsoft Game Studios, the original Mass Effect released exclusively for the Xbox 360 in 2007. Set in the year 2183, the game follows main protagonist Commander Shepard, an elite soldier tasked with thwarting the galactic invasion planned by the Reapers, an advanced race of sentient starships. Mass Effect eventually made its way to the PlayStation 3 and PC, with EA taking over publishing duties.
BioWare and EA followed up the original game with Mass Effect 2 in 2010, Mass Effect 3 in 2012 and Mass Effect: Andromeda in 2017. In December of 2020, BioWare officially announced that a fifth mainline Mass Effect game, possibly a sequel to the original trilogy, was in development. Throughout its existence, the Mass Effect video game franchise has largely been praised for its narrative, gameplay and worldbuilding, as well its emphasis on player choice.
The Mass Effect franchise has already expanded beyond the world of gaming. The original video game trilogy received a trilogy of tie-in novels published by Del Rey Books, while Andromeda received its own trilogy of novels published by Titan Books. Moreover, a number of Mass Effect comic book series and one-shot shorts have been published by Dark Horse Comics.
Mass Effect: Paragon Lost, an animated film produced by Production I.G and distributed by Funimation, released in 2012. Prior to that, Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to Mass Effect in 2010, though the studios' planned film adaptation of the video game series never got off the ground.
Source: Deadline