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HomeGamingGod of War showrunner praises "genius" game director Cory Barlog

God of War showrunner praises “genius” game director Cory Barlog

Atreus rides on Kratos' back as he climbs a mountain-side in God of War (2018)
(Image credit: Sony Santa Monica)

A God of War live-action series is in the works at Amazon, and its showrunner wants to keep “the spirit” of the video game intact. During an appearance at at San Diego Comic-Con 2025, Ronald D. Moore revealed he is “in the scripts phase”, as the show aims to start filming next year.

“We’re still working on scripts. It’s going very well. We’ve got a good team. It’s been a fascinating thing to sink my teeth into. I’ve never done an adaptation of a video game, and the deeper I got into it, the more impressed I was with the breadth and the depth of the mythology that’s involved in this video game,” he told Collider.

Moore had great things to say about God of War’s game director Cory Barlog, who is involved in the adaptation of the story for the small screen. “Cory Barlog is a genius,” he said.

“That’s not a word I throw around very much, but I’ve had several meetings with Cory, and you ask Cory, ‘Well, tell me about the backstory of this or how this works,’ and he just can talk because he holds it all in his head. And I usually pride myself about, as a showrunner, I can hold the season in my head. I know what the 10 episodes are, and I can tell you about them.

“Cory can tell you the whole thing in every possible way – all the mythology, how it connects one to the other, what the puzzles were, why they did this, and what that artifact did. It’s really impressive. I mean, it is like a gigantic novel, even bigger than the Outlander novels, which is a lot to digest.”

Moore developed the adaptation of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels, and over the last three decades has worked as a screenwriter for fan-favorite shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Battlestar Galactica, and For All Mankind. Now he has another huge challenge ahead of him, and he is facing it with the utmost respect for the fans, as he works to stay as close as possible to the games.

“This world and this universe are really rich, and it’s interesting, and it’s really been fun to adapt. It’s an adaptation, so it’s an adaptation-slash-interpretation as you go into live-action, and it’s been really fun to sort of go, ‘Wow, there’s a lot here we can play with. Okay, we want to keep the story. We want to keep the characters and the spirit of it.’ There’s all this stuff that you can keep turning to for inspiration. It’s really been interesting,” he explained.

In another recent interview, the God of War showrunner confessed that he is “not a gamer”, so he had “no expectations” when he was first offered the job in this new project. “I knew the title, but I didn’t really know what the story was, so I didn’t really know what I was going to be looking at, and I was just taken with it. And so I said, yeah, I’d love to do it. I think it’s really interesting,” he said.

First announced back in 2022, the God of War TV adaptation in a collaboration between Amazon, Sony and PlayStation Productions. Although plot and cast details are still under wraps, we know the series will adapt the Norse era games, with Kratos and Atreus being the focus of the story.

Two seasons have already been ordered, and filming is set to start in 2026 at the earliest.

For more, learn about another beloved game adaptation in our Fallout season 2 guide, and check out our list of all upcoming video game movies to know what’s next.

Mireia is a UK-based culture journalist and critic. She previously worked as Deputy Movies Editor at Digital Spy, and her work as a freelance writer has appeared in WeLoveCinema and Spanish magazines Fotogramas, Esquire, and Elle. She is also a published author, having written a book about Studio Ghibli’s ‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ in 2023. Talking about anime and musicals is the best way to grab her attention.

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