Back in 2019, Sony Pictures Television and production company Hivemind, announced a deal with Square Enix to create a live-action TV show set in the world of Final Fantasy XIV.
Today we learn that the project is "dead," as mentioned by its executive producer Dinesh Shamdasani, who responded on his X (formerly Twitter) account to a question by user Kevin_Satron (who then reported it on Reddit),
Shamdasani mentions that the size and scale needed to create the series properly proved too much for any broadcasting partner, with Amazon coming closest.
Here's the full reply:
Dead. We took around a fantastic pilot script by Ben Lustig & Jake Thornton along with a multi-season plan they built with our show runners but got rejected across the board. The size and scale needed to do it right proved too much for anyone to want to risk. Amazon came closest.
The series was supposed to tell an original story set in the world of Eorzea, and was officially described as follows (from the original press release).
Inspired directly by the world and characters of the title's fourteenth installment, the project will embrace the bold and genre-bending sensibilities of the revered and long-running Final Fantasy series as it explores the struggle between magic and technology in a quest to bring peace to a land in conflict.
Filled with iconic hallmarks of the title's revered mythology – magitek and beastmen, airships and chocobos – the forthcoming series will feature a mixture of new and familiar faces. Those will, notably, include the live-action debut of Cid – one of the games' central and most beloved characters who has appeared in almost every installment of the franchise to date.
This is, of course, a completely separate project from the Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light TV drama available on Netflix (speaking of which, we learned today that the person who originally inspired the "Dad of Light" has sadly passed away), which is a Japanese production released in 2017.
Final Fantasy XIV is now available on PS5, PS4, PC, and Mac, while an Xbox Series X|S port will launch this spring with an open beta beginning in February. The game is extremely successful, having recently passed 30 million registered accounts. If you want to join that number, you can purchase a copy of the game on Amazon.
A new expansion titled Dawntrail is coming in the summer of 2024, but no release date has been announced. You can check out the latest cinematic trailer and the latest details.
Square Enix recently celebrated a Fan Festival in London and hosted the Eorzean Symphony Orchestra. You can read our reports about both in case you missed them.
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