With news breaking that the upcoming season of Umbrella Academy is to be its last, it looks like executive producer and showrunner Steve Blackman will have some free time on his hands. After re-signing with Netflix in a deal reported to be worth eight figures to him, he’s going to be spending that time working on the upcoming Horizon: Zero Dawn adaptation of the much loved and fantastic action-adventure Playstation game.
This won’t be his only new show either, with reports suggesting he’ll be spending his time between Horizon: Zero Dawn and an ISS-inspired ‘thriller event’ television show named Orbital. All this at the same time as ensuring he’ll be delivering the best finale Umbrella Academy fans deserve. Less free time than he might have expected.
Horizon: Zero Dawn, A History
One of the biggest Playstation exclusives of the last generation, Horizon: Zero Dawn had players living in the shoes of Aloy, a young warrior outcast to the fringes of her society. Set in a world both primitive in technology, and incredibly advanced in it, we follow Aloy on a quest as she attempts to find the truth about herself, the world at large, and the various clans around her.
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With constant hints that the world may be more familiar to the player than originally thought, it turns out that the world we’re in is simply our own, except a few hundred years in the future. Due to a pandemic brought upon the world by its own hubris, the remnants of the human race are locked away, cloned, and then released into a world full of overgrown cities, technological dinosaurs, and at a complete loss of what came before.
The recent sequel Horizon: Forbidden West was released earlier this year, to similar if slightly lesser critical acclaim. Aloy’s story continues as we explore a greater yet still primitive version of the United States, find out more of the story the first started, and enjoy new types of enemies, updated combat, and gorgeous-looking visuals.
Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Television Show
Announced in May of this year, Netflix won the bidding war to secure the rights to an adaptation of the titular game. Whilst not many plot details are available right now, with the show in its initial stages, we at least know who will be overseeing the show.
Steve Blackman of Umbrella Academy fame has been tapped up to take the reins, and fans are hopeful he’ll be bringing the same tight, exciting quality to his newest show. As of yet, there’s no writer(s) attached to the show, so it’s not known if we’ll be following the same storyline of the first game or a unique interpretation of it.
Netflix hasn’t had the best run of things with its adaptations, its most recent being the poorly received Resident Evil. A show split over two timelines should have twice the chance of being a faithful, fun, and interesting premise relating to its predecessor games, but this wasn’t to be the case. That said, the performance of Lance Reddick in the show is one of the few decent things, and as players will know, Reddick is a major plus point to the first two Horizon games. Hopefully the casting department won’t look too far if the same character appears in the show.
Lance Reddick or not, the show is going to be a few years away at least, and to do it justice costs an extreme amount of money. Here’s hoping Netflix give it more than one season before they cancel it…
Source: Deadline
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