Amazon Signs Huge Gaming TV Shows Deal With ‘Sonic The Hedgehog’ Producer
Amazon Studios has made one of its biggest commitments to gaming entertainment yet, signing a huge deal with one of the production companies behind the Sonic the Hedgehog movie franchise to bring a number of PC and console blockbusters to the small screen.
Partnering with Dmitri M Johnson’s dj2 Entertainment, which specializes in adapting video game titles for television and film, Amazon Studios will create gaming TV shows that will exclusively stream on Prime Video to 240 countries worldwide.
dj2, which is best known for co-producing 2020’s Sonic film and its soon-to-drop April sequel, is currently creating the upcoming Tomb Raider: The Animated Series for Netflix, which has a two-season order with Prime Video’s rival.
However, dj2 has also bagged an impressive number of partnerships with both AAA and indie developers, with a view to adapting some of the most celebrated games of recent years with Amazon Studios, including 2021 Game Awards GOTY It Takes Two, ZA/UM’s celebrated epic Disco Elysium, Dontnod’s Life is Strange, and Tarsier Studios’ Little Nightmares.
Most recently, dj2 secured a game-to-producer deal with Swedish video game publisher Raw Fury, which will see it adapting its catalog–which includes Norcoand last year’s marvelous Sable–into television and film.
The first-look agreement will see dj2 bringing scripted TV projects to Amazon first, while agreed projects will involve dj2–whose talent also includes Dan Jevons, Stephan Bugaj, Howard Bliss, and Tim Stevenson–as non-writing executive producers.
Dmitri M Johnson, CEO of dj2 Entertainment, said: “The dj2 team has long believed that video games would one day serve as incredible source material for stories told in television and film, and that it was only the lack of love and respect for the art form, which previously held successful adaptations back.
“It is truly an honor to have Prime Video as our platform partner–a partner who truly supports us, as well as our grand ambitions, for telling the best international gaming stories with no limitations in how high we may collectively aim.”
Nick Pepper, Amazon Studios’ head of studio creative content, echoed Johnson’s sentiments. “I cannot express enough just how excited we are to be working with the powerhouse team at dj2 Entertainment. Their expertise and skill in the gaming-to-screen market are unparalleled,” he said. “The possibilities are endless for what we can create together for our global audiences.”
While this puts Amazon Studios at the forefront of TV shows using popular game IPs, it won’t be without competition. This year also sees the launch of Binge, which has engineered deals with Ubisoft, Crytek, and more to announce live-action adaptations of System Shock, Driver, and Hunt: Showdown.
It’s another big move into the gaming market for Amazon, which last week revealed that Lost Ark, a free-to-play MMORPG developed by South Korea’s Smilegate RPG for Amazon Games, had reached over 1.325 million concurrent players, becoming it the second-highest played game of all time on Steam. Within just three days of launching–as of February 14–Lost Ark had registered over 4.7 million players in the west.
