Amazon has greenlit the long-awaited Life is Strange TV adaptation, almost a decade after plans to adapt the game were first announced.
Charlie Covell, writer of Channel 4’s The of the F***king World and Netflix’s Kaos, will head the series as executive producer and showrunner, Variety reported, with video game publisher Square Enix and Amazon MGM Studios both on board.
When a Life is Strange TV adapatation was first announced back in 2016, only the series’ first game had been released — with the expectation being that it would adapt said game. And now, years later, this remains the case, with an official blurb for the show mentioning the franchise’s most popular characters, Max and Chloe.
Covell’s adaptation will follow Max, “a photography student, who discovers she can rewind time while saving the life of her childhood best friend, Chloe,” the blurb reads. “As she struggles to understand this new skill, the pair investigate the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student, uncovering a dark side to their town that will ultimately force them to make an impossible life or death choice that will impact them forever.”
Exactly how the TV adaptation will handle the game’s choose-your-own-adventure storytelling is another matter, however, and it’ll certainly be interesting to see which of the two main endings the series will choose to follow.
The announcement of the TV series also comes at an interesting time for the Life is Strange franchise overall. Originally developed by Don’t Nod, more recent entries in the series have been created by Deck Nine Games — though exactly what the future holds for the franchise now has yet to be announced.
After various sequels focusing on separate characters, a belated follow-up to the original game arrived in October 2024 but failed to land with long-term fans. Life is Strange: Double Exposure saw the return of Max but not Chloe, something which angered those who felt their past in-game choices were not being properly represented. Behind the scenes, the game suffered a rocky development as Deck Nine Games struggled with internal toxicity and crunch. Subsequently, the studio has been hit by multiple rounds of layoffs.
“For years we’ve had so many people asking us to create a Life is Strange TV show,” Square Enix External Studios bosses Jon Brooke and Lee Singleton said today, “and we’re so pleased to finally partner with Amazon MGM Studios who we trust will do an incredible job bringing our universe to life.”
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at [email protected] or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
