Sony Pictures TV To Produce Comic Book Drama Series ‘Powers’ For PlayStation

Sony’s PlayStation video game console is the latest digital platform to enter the original programming space. Its first show will be hourlong drama Powers, based on the graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming. The series will be produced by PlayStation sibling Sony Pictures TV, where the project had been gestating for awhile and went through several incarnation at FX, including a pilot. Powers for PlayStation represents a brand new take on the source material, penned by Charlie Huston. Returning auspices include Circle of Confusion as well as Bendis, Oeming and Michael Dinner who will executive produce with Huston and Remi Aubuchon (Falling Skies), along with Circle of Confusion’s David Engel, David Alpert and Lawrence Mattis. Huston and Aubuchon will serve as showrunners. Combining the genres of superhero fantasy, crime noir and police procedural, Powers, whose order is said to be around 10 episodes, is set in a world full of people with superhuman abilities and where all of those powers are just another catalyst for mayhem and murder. The series follows Detective Christian Walker, who is in charge of protecting humans like us and investigating cases involving the God-like men and women, referred to as “powers,” who glide through the sky on lightning bolts and fire and who clash above cities in epic battle, oblivious to the mortals below. No start date is set yet for the series, which is expected to be of premium cable quality.  SPT will sell internationally. The studio already has experience producing for digital platforms — it has a 13-episode order from Netflix for a drama series from the Damages creators.

PlayStation joins rival, Microsoft’s XBox, which announced Halo as its first original scripted series a year ago though the project doesn’t have a green light yet.