The Long-Awaited ‘Mass Effect’ Show Has a Showrunner Now

Prime Video’s upcoming Mass Effect show is progressing slowly, but surely. On Friday, Deadline revealed the live-action series gained Doug Jung as its showrunner.

Jung, who most may remember as the co-writer for 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, recently ended a showrunner/executive producer stint for Apple TV+’s Chief of War. He’ll be working alongside writer Dan Casey, and both will EP for the series alongside franchise producer Mike Gamble. As Deadline notes, this is a “major step forward” in the show’s development, which was first teased all the way back in 2021, then had its existence reaffirmed back in 2024.

To date, Prime Video’s kept mum on what exactly Casey’s pitch was for the Mass Effect show. Among fans, the general thinking is that it’ll just adapt the initial trilogy of Commander Shepard gathering allies to fight the Reapers. (This also seemed to be the plan when a movie seemed likely back in 2007 after the first game came out.) But shows like Castlevania and Prime Video’s own Fallout have taken a different approach that tells an original story inside the worlds of those series. (Fallout in particular carries itself like a Fallout 5 we’re getting to watch but not play.) Others, like Tomb Raider and Dragon Age, continued (or hoped to) the stories of the games they’re based on.

There’s certainly different routes for the Mass Effect series to take, and we’ll be interested to learn Jung and Casey’s approach in due time.

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