Amazon's God of War curse continues — star out, four episodes binned, kids recast

Here we are in the ongoing saga of Prime Video's God of War adaptation—one of those stories that sounds made up if you say it out loud in the pub, but here we are. Ordered straight to a hefty two-season commitment back in December 2022, they've still not managed to get a permanent Kratos sorted, and the timeline is getting faintly ridiculous.

God of War was ordered straight to series all the way back in December 2022.

Kratos Calamity

The main drama centres around casting: production was rolling along in Vancouver, with Ryan Hurst set as Kratos, until he went and tore his bicep doing a stunt in late June. Once it became clear his recovery would drag out longer than producers could stomach, both Sony Pictures Television and Amazon MGM Studios decided to straight up recast rather than push the schedule back indefinitely. That means four whole episodes—already shot—now have to be redone, and prep has been shoved back to mid-August before they even think about rolling cameras again in October. Kicking the can down the road, as only big TV productions can.

If that's not expensive enough, they're also swapping out two more characters—but for different reasons. No on-set injuries there; that was apparently baked into the plan from the start.

The Kids Aren't Alright (Or Rather, They're Older)

Casting calls that went out in May tell the story there. Amazon's looking for new actors, aged 14 to 17, for the roles codenamed "Joshua" and "Ruth" (translation: Atreus and Thrud for the rest of us). For season one, they landed on Callum Vinson and Island Austin, much younger at 9-to-12 for the parts, but season two is having none of that—straight on to the teenagers.

This actually tracks with the source material: Atreus is only 11 in the 2018 game, but by God of War Ragnarök (set three years later), he's a proper 14-year-old, which lines up with the new casting bracket. Same with Thrud, who wasn't in the original game at all, so the show seems determined to fast forward into Ragnarök territory rather than lingering in the gap. The Thrud casting notes mention a rocky relationship with parents and a special connection with her grandfather (Odin himself), so if it sounds like they're skipping straight to the big Norse family angst—yep, that's exactly what's going on.

• Kratos: Lost his lead, shooting start shunted to October, four episodes to reshoot
• Atreus (Joshua): Recasting for the older version, following the time-jump from the games
• Thrud (Ruth): Same treatment—teenage recast to jump ahead to Ragnarök events

Tricks of the Trade (and Timelines)

It's also worth pointing out that Sony had things easier in one regard: Sunny Suljic (who voices Atreus in the games) just aged naturally when recording, even managed to hit puberty mid-way through cutting lines for the sequel. For TV, there's no such luxury—Amazon's committed to back-to-back shooting. They can't just wait for actors to get older, and original paperwork flagged Vinson's contract as a one-year gig, so it was always going to be a handover situation.

The real headache at this point is Kratos. The longer it takes to lock someone in, the more risk that Callum Vinson will end up looking much older when they finally get back to those reshoots, making the continuity across episodes a pain. At this rate, the show probably won't land on screens before deep into 2028. The waiting game continues.