Sega, Picturestart team for video game adaptations ‘Space Channel 5’, ‘Comix Zone’ (exclusive)

With a third Sonic the hedgehog movie now in the works, Sega, the video game company behind the worldwide hit, is now turning to other titles for adaptation.

Sega has partnered with Picturestart, the banner behind the recently released am i okay? and Sundance hit Cha Cha Really Smoothto develop film adaptations of two of his 90s video game titles, Room channel 5 and Comix zone.

Channel 5A comedy/dance adaptation of the 1999 cult classic, tells the story of a hapless fast food worker who is recruited by a freedom reporter from the future to save the world from aliens using the one thing that unites all humans on the planet: our love for crazy viral dances.

That project is being written by Barry Battles and Nir Paniry. Battles wrote and directed The Baytown Outlaws, a 2012 crime comedy starring Billy Bob Thornton and Eva Longoria. Paniry wrote and directed extracteda sci-fi drama nominated for the Emerging Visions Award at South by Southwest.

Zone, an adaptation of the cult console game, follows a jaded cartoonist and a young, queer writer of color who, when sucked into the final issue of his hit series, must put aside their differences to prevent a dangerous supervillain from complete destruction. sows . In the process, they wittily explore the ever-evolving art of storytelling itself.

Zone will be written by Mae Catt, whose credits include writing the Emmy-winning animated DC series young justiceand the How to train your dragon spin-off series, Dragons: The Nine Realm. She was also a writer on Netflix’s Transformers: War for Cybertron Trilogy.

Royce Reeves-Darby and Erik Feig oversee both projects for Picturestart and will co-produce with the company’s Samie Kim Falvey. Picturestart already has a nose for video game customization as it is one of the companies producing border areasLionsgate’s fantasy based on the Gearbox/2K Games video game.

Sega’s Toru Nakahara, producer for the Sonic the hedgehog film franchise and executive producer for Sonic Prime TV series, will produce the two adaptations. Sega video game director Takumi Yoshinaga will join the team for Channel 5 while Kagasei Shimomura, Sega’s video game producer, joins the team for Zone.

Battles is represented by CAA and Bellevue Productions, while Paniry is represented by Bellevue. Catt is represented by Write Large.