Ryan Hurst is no longer Kratos — God of War is reshooting four episodes
Ryan Hurst tore a bicep filming Prime Video's God of War series and Amazon has recast Kratos. Four completed episodes will be reshot with the new lead actor.
He put on 40 pounds of muscle, spent months on a Vancouver set playing the god of war, and now he is off the show. Ryan Hurst will not be Kratos in Prime Video’s God of War adaptation, and Amazon has to reshoot everything he filmed.
Why did Ryan Hurst leave the God of War series?
The actor was badly hurt in late June performing a stunt: he tore a bicep. Recovery was estimated at up to six months — far too long for a production schedule already in motion. Amazon weighed waiting it out and decided it could not. Hurst had rebuilt his body for the part and worked on it for months, which makes the call an especially brutal one.
What happens to the episodes already filmed?
Four episodes were complete when the injury happened. All of them will be redone with whoever takes over, and no replacement has been named yet — the search for a new Kratos is underway. It is an expensive reset for one of PlayStation’s most closely watched moves into television, adapting the game Sony turned into one of its biggest hits.
For anyone tracking the churn around this year’s big series, it is another chapter in a chaotic season — the same one in which HBO decided to point its cameras at Burning Man. The difference is that nobody wanted this plotline: the general wish is a simple one, that Hurst heals properly.
By Lucy Bennett
Image: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
