“It took Amazon having the imaginative and prescient to say, ‘We don’t must do a land seize to make a present like this,’” Miller says. “All people is aware of Hollywood is a really acquisitive place; they need to personal and management every little thing in the event that they’re going to take a position cash in it. Amazon stated, ‘We perceive these are large video games that exist in their very own proper. We’re simply borrowing them for some time.’ They made the deal-making simple.”
The primary season of Secret Stage is slated to run for 15 episodes, which shall be launched two per week, with tales starting from 5 to 10 minutes every. Secret Stage additionally boasts an all-star forged, together with Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Claudia Doumit, Kevin Hart, and plenty of extra. Tonally, the episodes run the gamut of kinds and genres, starting from an epic sci-fi saga primarily based on Warhammer 40,000: Area Marine 2 to a screwball motion journey primarily based on Sony’s short-lived on-line sport Harmony. The episode primarily based on the previous really serves as a sequel to the critically acclaimed sport, and this isn’t the one sport story getting an enlargement from Secret Stage. For the episode primarily based on Unreal Event, Blur labored carefully with Epic Video games to carry the expansive sci-fi world to life and weave a beforehand untold story into the franchise’s lore.
“We obtained right into a room with Epic to determine it out,” Wilson recollects, with the Unreal Event episode telling the rise of its gladiatorial antagonist, Xan. “One of many issues we wished to do in Secret Stage is to inform the story that you simply’re not accustomed to within the sport. We don’t need to simply retread the identical floor.”
These shut collaborations make each episode of Secret Stage not solely rewarding for longtime followers of a given online game property but additionally welcoming and accessible to newcomers. Every story is supposed to be consultant of the bigger property however not essentially beholden to it.
“For the uninitiated, they will sit again and let it wash over them,” Miller says. “It’s not exposition-heavy, however you don’t really feel misplaced in the event you haven’t invested years of your life within the franchise.”
And whereas there are many video video games that potential future seasons of Secret Stage might adapt, Miller hopes to broaden the scope of the present to cowl different types of gaming.
