Live-action Final Fantasy TV series is dead in the water
The successes of Final Fantasy are pretty lofty, and you only have to look as far as the sheer number of games to see that. Sequels, remakes, and spin-offs have kept coming for years, and as fans are peppered across the globe, it makes you wonder why the franchise hasn't branched far beyond the games.
We've had animated movies and special presentations over the years, but nothing that really earns its place as the definitive representation of Final Fantasy outside of the games. One project had the potential to finally make it happen, but it looks like it's gone under before it has a chance to shine.
Final Fantasy's live-action series is finished
The team working on a show based on Final Fantasy 14 was Hivemind, and much to the dismay of fans, its co-founder has revealed that the project is completely thrown to the side.
Responding to someone asking whether there were any updates on the live-action series, Dinesh Shamdasani abruptly confirmed, "Dead." Although saying he had a fantastic pilot script written by Ben Lustig and gaming veteran Jake Thornton, plans for a multi-season story have been scrapped.
The news comes five years after a joint venture between Hivemind and Sony Pictures Television announced the Final Fantasy 14 series, but for those hoping this was going to rival HBO's The Last of Us series, their hopes have been dashed.
Shamdasani said Amazon came closest to taking it one, but ultimately, it was too much of a "risk." It's a shame to see the project go because the notion itself had great potential to be a success. Then again, we suppose it simply wasn't meant to be.
Jake Thornton - FF14 series' death was "a real result of COVID"
According to Thornton, it looks like there were other factors at play in the loss of the Final Fantasy 14 live-action series. Predominantly, its timing around the closure of the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic had a large impact.
Saying that studios began to "zip up their purse strings," it seems like a case of wrong place, wrong time. Still, we've seen a boom in live-action series based on video games, with the aforementioned The Last of Us and the upcoming Amazon series for Fallout and God of War.
It's a brutal fate for a series that could have been a real treat, and now, Final Fantasy fans are just going to have to wait for another opportunity. At least we've got the Final Fantasy VII Rebirth to enjoy in 2024, and more games are surely over the horizon. As for a live-action adaptation, maybe one day.
