‘Twisted Metal’: Kitao Sakurai To EP & Direct Peacock Series

EXCLUSIVE: Kitao Sakurai (The Eric Andre Show, Bad Trip) will executive produce and direct multiple episodes of Peacock’s Twisted Metal.

Twisted Metal is a comedic half-hour live-action adaptation of the popular video game from Sony Pictures TV, PlayStation Productions, and Universal Television. Anthony Mackie both stars and executive produces the series.

From Cobra Kai writer Michael Jonathan Smith, Twisted Metal is a high-octane action comedy, based on an original take by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick about a motor-mouthed outsider offered a chance at a better life, but only if he can successfully deliver a mysterious package across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. With the help of a trigger-happy car thief, he’ll face savage marauders driving vehicles of destruction and other dangers of the open road, including a deranged clown who drives an all too familiar ice cream truck.

Mackie plays John Doe, a smart-ass milkman who talks as fast as he drives. With no memory of his past, John gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make his wish of finding community come true, but only if he can survive an onslaught of savage vehicular combat.

Alongside Mackie, Sakurai, and showrunner Smith, executive producers also include Reese, Wernick, Will Arnett and Marc Forman via their Electric Avenue production company, Jason Spire of Inspire Entertainment, Peter Principato of Artists First, Asad Qizilbash, and Carter Swan from PlayStation Productions, Hermen Hulst, Head of PlayStation Studios.

Arnett and Forman secured the rights to the material and helped put the adaptation together.

The series is co-produced by Sony Pictures Television, PlayStation Productions, and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group.

Sakurai is a writer, director, and producer who is currently the director and executive producer of The Eric Andre Show for Adult Swim. Most recently, he collaborated with Andre in Bad Trip, a comedy film for Netflix.

On the TV side, he served as director on two FX series: Dave, Season 2 (two episodes), and BJ Novak’s The Premise (one episode).

Up next for Sakurai, he is set to helm the feature 72 Hours for Sony Pictures in collaboration with Davis Entertainment and Cobra Kai creators Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald through their Counterbalance Entertainment.

Sakurai is repped by UTA, 3Arts, and attorney Isaac Dunham.