The Sims, one of the biggest names in the computer game world, is heading to the big screen.
Kate Herron, best known for directing season one of the genre-bending Marvel series Loki, is attached to tackle an adaptation of the game in a hot package that has hit the studios and streamers this week. Herron will also co-write the screenplay with Briony Redman.
LuckyChap, the production company run by Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerly, Josey McNamara and Sophia Kerr and which is still basking in the glow of producing Barbie, will produce the feature along with Roy Lee and Miri Yoon of Vertigo Entertainment. Electronic Arts, which published the game, will also be involved in a creative and producing capacity.
Sims is a life simulation computer game where players play as an avatar that has changeable personality traits, skills, and relationships, and goes through the mundane tasks of daily life like making dinner and decorating a home. The game is built on characters having goals and aspirations. They may also, depending on the game, build out one’s family.
After the first game was released in 2000, the suburban setting of the franchise was expanded, via sequel and expansion packs, to include an almost never-ending array of settings and tones such as vacations, show business, dating, high school life, even magic and vampires. The array of characters is also in near-endless supply, though members of the Goth and Landgraab families are among the more prominent.
On some level, Sims shares similar traits as Barbie. The game has no real narrative and features characters going about their lives, albeit controlled by gameplayers. Barbie, as a toy, has no narrative, being a doll with an endless array of careers, controlled by players.
Lee, who will be in theaters this weekend with horror Late Night with the Devil, has developed similarly difficult to adapt IP with the Lego movies. Those animated features has inspired spin-offs and pulled in hundreds of millions at the box office.
For her part, Herron has shown an affinity for genre defiant material, making Loki, with its multiple timelines and worlds, into Marvel’s most watched show on Disney+.
At the moment, LuckyChap is the hottest production company in Hollywood after the billion dollar success of Barbie and the meme-able R-rated Emerald Fennell title Saltburn. Coming up, the company has comedy My Old Ass, which sold out of the Sundance Film Festival to MGM Amazon.
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