Amazon Prime reportedly 'nearing a deal' on a Mass Effect adaptation

The Wheel of Time series, which debuted on November 19, has apparently been a success for Amazon Prime. That's why, Deadline reports, Amazon Studios is doubling down on adaptations—among them, a potential Mass Effect TV show. "Amazon Studios is nearing a deal to develop a series based on the best-selling sci-fi video game franchise from Electronic Arts", as Deadline puts it.

Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, said the Lord of the Rings prequel series debuting on Amazon Prime next September (which is confusingly not allowed to reference The Silmarillion, the Lord of the Rings prequel that already exists) is part of the same commitment to adaptations. "We know our global audience is hungry for elevated fantasy and shows based on beloved IP", she said.

"You will see us continuing to invest in fantasy genre of all kinds, we have a genre-focused team on the ground in Studios who work tirelessly with our creative partners on those slates, and you can look forward to more," according to Salke.

Mass Effect would probably be more suited to an ongoing series than a movie adaptation, like the one that was planned and then abandoned after Legendary Pictures picked up the rights back in 2010. Explaining why the movie never did get made, BioWare's Mac Walters said, "If you're going to tell a story that's as fleshed out as 'Mass Effect,' TV is the way to do it. There's a natural way it fits well with episodic content." 

The games have a fair bit of Star Trek and Babylon 5 in their DNA, and Walters said that writing Mass Effect was a lot like writing TV. "When we build out a 'Mass Effect' game, we have a backbone, or an overall story that we want to tell, but each level or mission is like its own TV episode," he said. "It doesn't get written ahead of time. It gets written at the time that we get to it. So it gets added to the main story and sometimes the main story gets adjusted because we did something really cool in that 'episode.'"