With Persona 4 Revival and Persona 6 on the horizon, fans of the long-running RPG series will be eating well in the near future, but a live-action Netflix show might be a more divisive offering.
Variety exclusively shared Netflix, 21 Laps, and Story Kitchen are teaming up – with producers like Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, and Robert Atwood involved – for a live-action TV show based on the popular RPG games developed by Atlus’ P-Studio and published internationally by Sega. It also has a showrunner attached to it already: Star Trek: Picard and 9-1-1 producer and writer Christopher Monfette.
Story Kitchen is the most noteworthy company attached to the project, as it’s been behind many of Hollywood’s recent pushes into video game adaptation territory. Its biggest success so far has been the ongoing Sonic the Hedgehog movie series, but it’s also involved in the upcoming Tomb Raider show and is trying to make the Split Fiction movie happen, among other projects.
Netflix hasn’t commented on Variety’s exclusive report yet, which also mentioned that Sega’s Toru Nakahara, a senior executive officer involved in the aforementioned Sonic movies, will executive produce as well. Story Kitchen is bringing in Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy I. Stevenson; all familiar names if you’ve been keeping tabs on recent video game adaptation announcements.
Needless to say, the idea of turning Persona into a live-action series will raise a few eyebrows, especially with Netflix currently facing heavy criticism from fans following the release of The Last Airbender’s second season, but as always, different creative teams deliver different results. One Piece remains the best example of the streamer tackling a tricky non-live-action IP and pleasing both critics and fans. Let’s see if Netflix can win over an infamously intense crowd with this new project.
