Twisted Metal Revival For PS5 In Development
Twisted Metal is getting a whole new revival for the new generation of Playstation!
This article is more than 2 years old
Sweet Tooth is burning tires on his way to a Twisted Metal reboot, sources close to Video Games Chronicle allege. The only thing better than Fast & Furious and another Joker or It movie is a killer clown driving an ice cream truck going 350 miles per hour — a mid-90s fantasy Sony plans on reliving in a brand-new Twisted Metal. The game is in early development stages over at Lucid, the same studio behind vehicular combat racer Destruction AllStars, and will reportedly release in 2022 as a free PlayStation Plus exclusive. The last Twisted Metal was also a reboot, hitting shelves worldwide a little over nine years ago, and was created by Eat Sleep Play and helmed by series creators David Jaffe and Scott Campbell, who also founded the studio. No word yet on whether Jaffe and Campbell are returning for Twisted Metal’s ninth-generation remake, which started out as a rumor.
Destruction AllStars is the PG successor to Twisted Metal, with more gags and Fortnite design callbacks than explosions and serial murderers on gas. It released to mostly negative reviews in February. Not a good look for Lucid going forward, but Sony presumably trusts the Liverpool studio enough to develop a fresh Twisted Metal experience worth playing on a next-generation console. Aside from Destruction AllStars, Lucid Games also made Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions and contributed to Need for Speed Payback. Destruction AllStars is essentially a marriage of both games.
The decision to reboot Twisted Metal from the ground-up resulted from Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick’s (Deadpool, 6 Underground) involvement in PlayStation Productions’s television adaptation of the series. VGS’s sources claim Sony is gearing to release the new Twisted Metal on the PlayStation 5 around the same time as the TV show, which is currently in pre-production with The Lego Batman Movie’s Will Arnett executive producing.
Twisted Metal will reportedly be an action comedy in the style of Free Guy and Deadpool. Reese and Wernick are already working on a live-action retelling of another popular video game IP — Watch Dogs — making them the perfect pair to spearhead an original take on a franchise of Twisted Metal’s caliber. Cobra Kai executive producer Michael Jonathan Smith is co-writing, having recently inked a new deal with Sony Pictures Television.
The Twisted Metal TV series was officially announced by Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman and CEO Tony Vinciquerra in March 2019. By February 2021, the crew filled out, with Reese, Wernick, Smith, and Arnett at the helm. Last month, Deadline revealed Anthony Mackie (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) was cast to play John Doe, a fast-talking milkman with a taste for the macabre. Similar to the games, Mackie’s character is the nameless protagonist of the show, tasked with competing in Twisted Metal against enemies of Sweet Tooth’s particular genus in the hopes of having one wish granted.
Will Arnett is rumored to be voicing Sweet Tooth, having already channeled the same rugged, breathy baritone playing Batman/Bruce Wayne in the Lego film series. The rebooted Twisted Metal video game for PS5 implies the TV adaptation will premiere sometime in 2022, which would place filming around the early months of 2022. The show may boast a holiday release. A killer clown spreading joy by killing thousands? Merry Christmas, indeed.
Twisted Metal is a car combat sim centered around the eponymous race, a competition headed by the demon Calypso, who grew up loving demolition derbys. His interest began in youth when he accidentally ran over his sister, whose head had split open like a watermelon. Calypso’s fascination with roadkill attracted Satan himself, and he was given the opportunity to host a demolition derby from hell — Twisted Metal.
The goal of the race was to eliminate other contestants in a handful of creative ways and allows the use of ballistic projectiles, machine guns, mines, and other explosive armaments. Sweet Tooth is one of the more virulent, yet happily sinister, contestants. The last driver alive is the winner, at which point the host (often Calypso, at one time Sweet Tooth) will grant one wish of their choosing. Unfortunately, the outcome of Twisted Metal is the “be careful what you desire” type and often results in the host twisting the wish to mess with the player’s mind. It’s like they say: a deal with the devil always ends in tragedy.
The Twisted Metal reboot comes out on the PlayStation 5 as a free-to-play PS Plus exclusive next year.
