Sony announced that it was officially working on a new TV series with Netflix based on the PlayStation’s Horizon franchise. In recent years, Horizon has quickly become one of the most recognizable PlayStation properties with both Horizon Zero Dawn and this year’s Horizon Forbidden West released to critical and commercial success. And while we previously didn’t know what this TV show for Horizon would look like, a new report has now shed some first details on the project.
What would be the plot?
According to Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb, the Horizon TV series on Netflix is going to sit alongside the story seen in the video games. The show is supposedly going to be called Horizon 2074 and will shed light on some of the events that take place before the fall of humanity. For those unaware of Horizon, the story seen in the video games is set hundreds of years after a cataclysmic event that wipes out much of life on Earth. Assuming that this series actually takes place partially in 2074, it would show the steps that are taken before the franchise’s main protagonist, Aloy, ever ends up coming about.
If the TV show ends up hewing closely to the story laid out by the game series, Horizon Zero Dawn will star Aloy in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity is struggling to survive in a world dominated by sentient machines.
These robots take the form of animal life, with dinosaur-like shapes and sizes to contend with, and while some are relatively peaceful others are fierce predators.
As much of a problem are the warring factions that dot the landscape, with different traditions and religions. All the while, Aloy has started to discover hints of how humanity fell from grace, and how she might be able to combat a threat that’s growing all the time.
We won’t go into much more detail since we don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t played the games, but Zero Dawn and Forbidden West offer up a really rich and vibrant future world that feels lived-in and populous while remaining strange and worrying.
However, the leading rumour right now indicates that the show won’t tell Aloy’s story, but rather fill in the world around her. In particular, reporter Jeff Grubb says that his sources say the show will be split between two timelines. One will be in Aloy’s post-apocalypse, while the other will be set just as things start to fall apart in the world that existed before.
That’s an interesting twist on the games that could let us get a greater sense of the world Aloy lives in, both before and during her time.
If the show can capture even half of this atmosphere it’ll offer something that few other TV series can match right now, although we suspect that it’s going to take a heck of a lot of practical and CG effects to make everything look just right.
Horizon Zero Dawn TV show release date and title
We don’t even have official confirmation that Netflix is really working on the show, so a release date is a long way off for Horizon – we wouldn’t expect to see it anytime before late 2023 at this point, since it hasn’t started shooting or even any definite pre-production.
The addition of a crew list on the website of the Director’s Guild of Canada has fuelled strong rumors that the show’s working title is Horizon 2074, although we don’t have any official confirmation about what it’ll be called.
