The Alan Wake TV Show Is Still in the Works, Remedy’s Sam Lake Reveals

2020’s been a surprisingly big year for fans of Alan Wake, the supernatural action-thriller that Remedy Entertainment released a decade ago. After its titular star appeared in Control’s second chunk of DLC this summer, Remedy announced that Control and Alan Wake are now considered two entries in a shared universe it plans to expand. Now, on top of that news it seems everyone’s favorite scruffy author is still slated for a go at television.

Today, as part of a lengthy Capital Markets Day presentation to the press and investors, Remedy’s Creative Director Sam Lake revealed that the Alan Wake television show first announced in 2018 is still in the works. With Peter Calloway (Legion) attached as its showrunner and writer, the project’s been quiet for a while—thankfully, though, it’s not trapped at the bottom of Cauldron Lake.

“Currently, we are in the process of creating [an] Alan Wake TV show,” Lake says. “Sure enough, it has taken some time, but it is going forward.”

Given the flood of new game-to-TV adaptations that have entered development this year, from the likes of Fallout to last year’s USG Game of the Year Disco Elysium, it might not be a shocker to hear the project’s not dead. Also, with a related product doing well for itself (Remedy also just announced that Control has sold more than 2 million copies), now’s probably the best time for a TV adaptation to capitalize on Alan since his debut back in 2010.

In 2018, Lake explained that the TV show would use the game’s story as a “starting point” before going on to expand “the lore of this crazy and dark universe.” With Alan Wake, Control, and Remedy’s next big game (funded by Epic Games) now part of a single universe, it’s possible we could even see shared continuity and canon between the Alan Wake game and the Alan Wake show.

As for that next Remedy Connected Universe game, we now know a bit more about how it’ll be structured. Noting that Control’s more freeform structure was a “clear leap forward for a Remedy game,” Lake hints that the next project connected to Alan Wake and Control will also embrace more nonlinear storytelling. That could mean Remedy’s gearing up to tackle something more like a true open-world game with its Northlight engine on these new consoles and PC, but perhaps we should wait and see how Control’s delayed next-gen upgrade fares before we get our hopes up for, oh, a fully explorable Bright Falls.

Thanks, Nibel.