With Fast & Furious 9 writer onboard.
Image credit: BioWare / Mass Effect
It’s been a good few years since reports surfaced Amazon was looking to adapt Mass Effect for television, but finally – as N7 day rolls around once more – the show has been made official.
A Mass Effect TV show was first touted back in 2021, when former BioWare lead writer Mac Walters explained various factors has contributed in the company shifting its initial vision of a movie adaptation toward something for the smaller screen. Later that same year, reports surfaced claiming Amazon was “nearing a deal” for a Mass Effect TV series, as part of its ongoing push into sci-fi and fantasy storytelling.
And now those reports have been confirmed. Variety says a Mass Effect TV series is now officially in development at Amazon, with Fast & Furious 9 (AKA F9: The Fast Saga) scribe Daniel Casey on writing and executive producer duties. Casey isn’t a complete stranger to sci-fi, having previously written 2018 movie Kin and done rewrites for 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Also executive producing are Karim Zreik, EA’s Michael Gamble, and Ari Arad, who’s served as producer on everything from the Uncharted movie and last year’s terrible Borderlands adaptation, to the Spider-Verse series and Nintendo’s upcoming Zelda film.
Beyond that, details of Amazon’s Mass Effect adaptation are limited, but we do know ardent gamer and former Witcher Henry Cavill at one time had an interest in the project. Back in February 2021, Cavill was snapped alongside a script apparently related to Mass Effect; then in December that year, not long after Amazon was said to be nearing a deal, Cavill casually revealed he’d “love to have a conversation” about it. However, with Cavill now confirmed to be involved with Amazon’s Warhammer adaptation, it’s likely things have change.
One person probably not excited about a Mass Effect TV series is ex-Bioware lead writer David Gaider, who previously said the idea of BioWare television adaptations made him “cringe”.
“For starters, Mass Effect and Dragon Age had a custom protagonist,” he explained. “Meaning said TV show will need to pick whether said protagonist will be male or female. Boom, right off the bat you’ve just alienated a whole bunch of the built-in fan base who had their hopes up… Secondly, those protagonists are designed to be a bit of a blank slate, one that the player fills out with their decisions. That’s not going to work for a passive medium. So, suddenly, the protagonist will have their own personality… and their own story. That will be weird.”
“Both Mass Effect and Dragon Age’s plots were, at best, serviceable,” he continued. “Those plots had to take into account the player’s agency. They were kind of the shell upon which that player’s emotional engagement was delivered – usually through the companions and the choices themselves. Choice heightened engagement. Interactivity was the star, not the plot.”
“Take all that out, lose most of the companions, and you potentially end up with… a pretty run-of-the-mill fantasy or science-fiction show, one where a lot of the built-in audience has possibly been turned into outraged, howling malcontents before it’s even released.”
Amazon has, of course, already navigated similar issues with this year’s Fallout TV adaptation, and that ended up releasing to significant acclaim and commercial success. So time will tell if Gaider’s concerns prove warranted.
