There seems to be trouble in the world of God of War, but this time the problems don’t come from the gods, but from mortal men.
As reported by Deadline, Amazon’s God of War streaming show seems set to start production all over again. That’s because the executive producers have all left the project.
We reported on Deadline’s original coverage announcing this show two years ago. And the same executive producers who were named then are the same people who have left the project now:
- Rafe Judkins, executive producer and showrunner for Amazon’s The Wheel of Time show, and
- Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, executive producers for SyFy show The Expanse
Deadline has no details on why Judkins, Fergus, and Ostby left this production. Apparently, Sony and Amazon even praised the work they had already done, and they were able to finish work for one season. But with the three now out of the project, Sony and Amazon are now planning to go in a different direction.
Earlier this year, Sony actually shared a preview of what fans could expect, in their CES presentation. They confirmed that the Judkins, Fergus, and Ostby scripts are based on the 2018 era, set in Scandinavia, many years after Kratos’ violent history in Greece.
Would a God of War show set in the Grecian era have worked for streaming? We think the answer to that is a huge maybe. While streaming shows are known for their uncensored adult content, appetites have evolved from the start of the streaming era.
When Spartacus: Blood and Sand first released in 2010, it would have been easier to see that mainstream audiences would have wanted to watch a God of War show in a similar Grecian and violent setting.
While there are still shows that feature violence and sex in a salacious manner, like the extended Game of Thrones franchise, viewer appetites have also evolved, such that streaming can also make hits of historical dramas like Chernobyl and kid’s shows like Bluey.
So we wouldn’t be too hasty in assuming that the reason this God Of War series hit a snag because they set it in the 2018 era of the games. If anything, this seems to compound Sony’s issues with developing a Horizon show with Netflix.
Sony saw huge success with their The Last of Us show with HBO. We can all see they really want to replicate that with their other franchises, but it doesn’t look like those efforts are going to pay off as well with these other projects.
