It’s been a while since we last heard tentative news about a Final Fantasy XIV live-action series. Turns out it was because the project no longer existed.
Hivemind co-founder Dinesh Shamdasani first announced the disappointing status of the series directly in 2019 via Twitter (a quick nod to Eurogamer). “Dead,” he declared of the show, “we took Ben Lustig and Jack Thornton’s great pilot script and the multi-season plan they had with our showrunners, but was roundly rejected. The size and scale required proved too difficult for anyone to do well [take the] risk. Amazon comes closest. “
iGamesNews
To recap: the Final Fantasy XIV series is a massive collaboration between Sony Pictures Television and Hivemind (the company behind Netflix’s The Witcher series). Unsurprisingly, budget became a big issue between the pilot script and getting it right for streaming services. Even as Amazon comes close to financing the show, the company is already backing big fantasy TV projects like the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 TV series The Lord of the Rings and the live-action God of War show. A series of orders have been received.
Screenwriter Jake Thornton also weighed in on the Twitter thread, adding that he believed the show was a casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic because they launched it “just as studios were starting to tighten their wallets.” This is certainly not the first major project to be put on hold over the years, nor is it a direct result of the economic fallout of the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Square Enix and the FF14 team are moving forward with the Dawntrail expansion, which will launch in summer 2024 and promises to take players to the sunny continent of Tural.
