Doug Jung, the writer for films like Star Trek: Beyond and The Cloverfield Paradox, and TV series like Mindhunter has been selected to be the showrunner for Amazon MGM Studios upcoming TV adaptation of Mass Effect.
The news comes from a new Deadline report, confirming that Jung will lead the show’s development and begin working in collaboration with Dan Casey, who has been writing for the show for the past year.
The very first time we heard about a Mass Effect TV series in the works was in 2021, and at the time, Amazon was only just securing a deal with EA and BioWare to make the series. Then, last November, we learned that Fast and Furious 9 writer Dan Casey had joined the project as a writer and executive producer, though the show was still missing its showrunner.
Now that Jung has filled that position, hopefully the series can actually start to make some serious progress and be out sometime in the near future. It’s still unclear what direction the adaptation will take, if it’ll be set in some part of the Mass Effect universe we don’t get to see in the games, or if it’ll follow along Shepard’s journey, and be something more akin to HBO’s The Last of Us, which sticks very close to the story in the games, save for a few changes in how the story is dolled out.
Who knows how this series will pan out, but one thing that Mass Effect fans can take solace in is the fact that it’s a TV series adaptation, instead of a film adaptation. Part of what players love about Mass Effect’s story is the small character moments that happen in between the main plot’s bigger and bombastic events.
It wouldn’t be impossible to convey the feeling of Mass Effect in a film, but it would be far more difficult simply due to time constraints. A premier TV show, however, can practically take as much time as it wants, if the series is a success. There’s easily a version of a Mass Effect TV show that takes the characters from the games we all love, and takes them on endless adventures we would have never seen in the games. That’s the hope, at least.
