Production on Prime Video’s highly anticipated God of War series has hit a major speed bump. A serious on-set injury to Ryan Hurst has forced a massive detour, leading to delays and some serious logistical headaches for the live-action adaptation.
According to TMZ, Hurst tore his bicep while filming a stunt in Vancouver and will require surgery. The injury likely means Hurst will need 6 months to get back up to full strength.
To make matters worse, the cameras had already been rolling for a while; the production team had successfully wrapped four entire episodes of their initial 10-episode first season when the accident happened. What really complicates things is that Amazon committed to a massive, two-season order from the start, meaning they planned to shoot all 20 episodes back-to-back.
Shortly after the news broke, Deadline confirmed that Amazon and Sony have decided to recast the role of Kratos. The time that Hurst would need to be sidelined to recover was reportedly greater than what the production schedule could accommodate.
It's an incredibly frustrating setback for an actor who was right on the precipice of a major career breakthrough. Hurst has built a great resume over the years with memorable turns in Sons of Anarchy and Remember the Titans, but a project of this scale is a rare opportunity.
Per Deadline, production is currently paused but is expected to resume in mid-October, meaning the role will be recast fairly quickly. It's likely that Sony and Amazon will turn to one of the other actors who were testing for Kratos but initially lost to Hurst.
Amazon Prime Video first announced plans for the God of War TV series back in December 2022.
In October 2024, Ronald D. Moore (Battlestar Galactica, Outlander, For All Mankind)stepped in as the new showrunner, taking over after the original creative team, Rafe Judkins (The Wheel of Time) and executive producers Hawk Ostby and Mark Fergus, left the project due to creative differences.
The upcoming series will follow the modern God of War games that focus on Norse mythology, as opposed to the original trilogy of PlayStation games that featured a more one-dimensional Kratos.
On the tone of the show, Moore previously stated, "The tone of the show is trying to emulate the tone of the game, which is this epic journey- this heartfelt journey of these two men setting out to honor the memory of Kratos' wife and Atreus' mother. So it has this emotional heart but there's this sense of history of who Kratos is and this mystery of his past and what he represents and the emotions that he's going through."
Stay tuned for future updates as it's expected that a new Kratos actor will be cast fairly soon.