The golden age of video game adaptations, a door blown wide open by the dizzying success of the Super Mario Bros. movie, is set to continue with a TV adaptation of the popular whodunnit game Among Us. Is this how things are now? What’s next? A Zelda movie? God I hope so.
The show, which will be animated, comes courtesy of CBS Studios, per Variety. A quick refresher if you’re not familiar with the game: Among Us is a multiplayer social deduction game where four to fourteen players try to figure out who’s an imposter (the game randomly chooses one to three).
Crewmates need to complete tasks and stay alive while imposters (who look identical to crewmates) try to kill them. Here’s the official logline: “Members of your crew have been replaced by an alien shapeshifter intent on causing confusion, sabotaging the ship, and killing everyone. Root out the ‘Impostor’ or fall victim to its murderous designs.”
The game, released in 2018, exploded in popularity during the pandemic. How will this translate to a scripted animated show? Who knows? It’s happening, though.
CBS Eye Animation Productions has teamed up with developer Innersloth on the show, with Titmouse (Big Mouth) acting as the animation studio. CBS tapped Owen Dennis as showrunner and executive producer of the show. Other than that, there’s not much else we know right now, besides the fact that this game is so ridiculously popular it might not even need a plot.
However, just because we’ve had some high profile video game hits (The Witcher, The Last of Us, the aforementioned Mario Movie) doesn’t guarantee success. Video game movies and shows are nothing new, but they’ve been treated as afterthoughts for the most part in years past. Remember Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time from 2010? No? That’s probably for the best.
Regardless, we’ll keep an eye on this one.