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I’m not exactly sure what Sega’s gameplan here is, but the developer has another live-action adaptation in the works, this time about Shinobi.
These days, it’s all about IP. Exploiting it, flogging it like a dead horse, whatever, if it’s a pre-existing IP, someone will find some way to make it even bigger and adapt it to whatever medium it already isn’t. Sega is clearly all in on that right now, finding a lot of success with its live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movies, a third one due out this year, and it’s also trying out a Yakuza TV series later this month on Prime Video. But it also has bigger ambitions than just the series that everyone still talks about now, as according to Deadline, a live-action film adaptation of its classic hack-and-slash series Shinobi is in the works at Universal.
I expect that anyone that’s old enough to have played Shinobi hasn’t exactly thought about it in a while, and anyone young enough to have not played it will say “what’s Shinobi?” Well, the original trio of games followed Joe Musashi, who worked very hard to become a respected ninja and eventually saves Japan, you know, a video game story in the ’80s. According to Deadline, Marvel’s Hit-Monkey and Sunny writer Ken Kobayashi will be handling the screenplay, with frequent Marvel stunt coordinator and Extraction director Sam Hargrave attached to direct.
A new Shinobi game is in the works too, first announced by Sega last year during a Game Awards trailer that revealed a whole bunch of other classics like Golden Axe, Crazy Taxi, and Jet Set Radio are coming back too.
Shinobi is definitely one of the more well-known classic Sega titles, but it is still an odd choice for an adaptation – though not as odd as the fact that Eternal Champions, a fighting game that hasn’t had a new entry in almost 30 years, is also getting a film adaptation.