Over the last few years, Sony has made it quite clear it wants its PlayStation games to pull double duty as TV/movie successes. So far, that’s given us the Tom Holland-led Uncharted from 2022, and the recent HBO adaptation of The Last of Us. But there’s plenty more adaptations on the horizon (Zero Dawn), from recent blockbusters like Days Gone and Ghost of Tsushima to...Twisted Metal.
Just before the weekend started, Peacock released the first trailer for the show ahead of its release in late July. It doesn’t really give you an idea about what the show will be about, though: the footage is just Anthony Mackie in a car and driving through an apparent battlefield, and there’s also an ice cream truck driven by a guy with a clown mask. The show’s premise sees Mackie playing an amnesiac milkman named John Doe, who’s tasked with driving a mysterious package through the post-apocalypse. At some point, he’ll cross paths with Quiet (Stephanie Beatriz), and the two will do car combat as they endeavor to get Doe’s package to the finish line.
For those who didn’t have a PlayStation console growing up, Twisted Metal was a car combat series that first started on the PlayStation 1 in 1995 from developer SingleTrac. The general premise across all the games is that contestants blow each other up to amuse a reality-warping man (demigod?) named Calypso, and whoever’s left standing is granted a single wish, but with some dark twist attached. The series was well-liked back in the day and one of PlayStation’s marquis franchises over the years thanks to multiple sequels and spinoffs from other studios after SingleTrac closed down.
But Twisted Metal as a series has been MIA ever since the PlayStation 3's 2012 reboot of the same name. The same month the reboot came out, Sony announced its plans to turn the series into a feature film, which never came to fruition. With this show on the horizon, it’s not entirely clear what’s happening on the game side of things; there was a rumor in early 2022 that a new installment was in the works from Horizon: Call of the Mountain developer Firesprite, one that the studio apparently took over from Motorstorm creator Lucid Games. Nothing’s come of that, but maybe Sony will be more forthcoming when the show is closer to the finish line.
Also starring Neve Campbell, Thomas Haden Church, Samoa Joe, and Will Arnett, Twisted Metal will premiere July 27 on Peacock.
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