Karyn Kusama has become a go-to director for TV series looking to establish a strong mood. She helmed the pilot for the plane-crash survival drama Yellowjackets and the first two episodes of season 3 of the horror anthology The Terror, which kicks off on May 7. Now the director of The Invitation and Jennifer’s Body is working on the first two episodes of Prime Video’s adaptation of Don’t Nod’s time-bending narrative game Life Is Strange.
“It’s a fantastic adaptation of the game,” Kusama told Polygon at a virtual junket. “It’s remaining true to some of the most signature things about the game, while also taking that leap forward into characters that we can feel and see are human. I’m really excited by it, because all the time-travel stuff will be so fun, and I’m just in the midst of prepping it now.”
The show will follow Max (Tatum Grace Hopkins of Queen of Versailles), a geeky photography student who discovers she has the ability to rewind time. She teams up with her childhood best friend Chloe (Maisy Stella) to learn how to use her powers and investigate a disappearance. Players have to make tough decisions that lead to multiple endings.
“I’m not a gamer, but I did watch playthroughs to see how the story could develop with certain choices,” Kusama says. “More than anything, I wanted to figure out how to honor what people love about the game while making it accessible to all the people like me who don’t generally game as a habit or as a hobby. I was really interested in the concept of bringing these characters to human life and depicting them in real environments. I’m hoping we’re going to strike a balance between honoring the game and making something distinctive on its own terms.”
Kusama said “absolutely nothing” appealed to her about doing a video game adaptation before she learned about Life Is Strange.
“It was such a cool game, and such an interesting set of questions,” she says. “Just the idea of time travel by five minutes is such a cool concept that I think we all wrestle with, like, Oh, if I could have just redone that moment. That was just really interesting to me, so I dove in.”