The previously announced live-action Final Fantasy 14 TV series is now "dead," according to its studio's co-founder.
Back in 2019, it was announced that a TV adaptation of Final Fantasy 14 was on the way from Sony Pictures Television, Square Enix, and production company Hivemind - the studio behind Netflix's The Witcher series. Not much was known about the project other than that it was set to feature an original story and take place in Eorzea.
Now, almost five years after the show's announcement, one of the co-founders of Hivemind has called time on the long-awaited TV show. "Dead," Dinesh Shamdasani responds to a fan who asks what happened to the project. "We took around a fantastic pilot script by Ben Lustig & @jakethornton along with a multi-season plan they built with our showrunners but got rejected across the board."
It was a real result of Covid unfortunately. We tookIt out just as studios began to zip up their purse strings.January 24, 2024
As for why the series got rejected by so many companies, Shamdasani explains: "The size and scale needed to do it right proved too much for anyone to want to risk," before revealing: "Amazon came closest."
Replying to Shamdasani's tweet, screenwriter Jake Thornton added: "It was a real result of Covid unfortunately. We took it out just as studios began to zip up their purse strings." Unfortunately, it looks like we won't be getting that Final Fantasy 14 series any time soon.
There is some good news for fans of the broader Square Enix series though. Earlier this month it was revealed that Final Fantasy founder, Hironobu Sakaguchi, is writing a new game - the only problem is he's still playing too much Final Fantasy 14 to give a lot of updates on this right now. We've also got Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth right around the corner, which is set to release on February 29, 2024.
As revealed last week, Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail is bringing back the MMO content everyone is missing from Endwalker.