Since its release last April, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie went on to hit the billion-dollar global box office mark, as its 2023 predecessor did, cementing the classic video game IP as a mainstay for the theatrical exhibition market.
Beyond the Mario sequel’s success, the sheer prevalence of gaming-based film releases in 2026 — the most of any year — was impossible to ignore.
Nine films based on video games will have released in the U.S. by the end of 2026, far more than the previous high of five a decade ago, which was largely soured by 20th Century Fox’s Assassin’s Creed flopping with audiences and critics alike.
While this year has shown a wide variety of gaming-adjacent films within and outside of the studio system, including YouTuber Markiplier’s self-financed Iron Lung success and Neon’s first such film in Exit 8, the TV side has stayed less active in premieres of shows based on video games.
Mike Goldberg, co-founder and producer at film and TV production company Story Kitchen, joined Luminate’s In the Lab podcast to explain the downturn in a discussion of Hollywood’s current approach to adapting gaming properties for big and small screens.
“It’s not that television’s been held back this year,” Goldberg said. “There’s a push across the board to tell amazing stories … that resonate and have preexisting IP that ideally has a fandom, so I think it’s just more a casualty of time cycles than anything.”
Co-founded in 2022 alongside Sonic the Hedgehog co-producer Dmitri M. Johnson, Story Kitchen is dedicated to ensuring that a wide variety of game-based franchises join Mario in forming new pillars of support for Hollywood.
While no TV shows based on games have hard dates set for 2027, Story Kitchen is involved with two prominent series coming to Prime Video: Life Is Strange, based on the critically acclaimed narrative adventure game published by Square Enix; and Tomb Raider, the first live-action project to come from Amazon Studios’ multimedia deal with IP owner Embracer Group.
Story Kitchen co-produces Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft for Netflix, while Amazon is helming the first God of War series with PlayStation Studios.
It’s an interesting wave for the company to ride, given pullbacks in spending throughout Hollywood as media adjusts its streaming strategies and outputs in the wake of negative profits, labor disputes and investors favoring AI-focused tech behemoths.
“I think, in general, television budgets have unfortunately come down,” Goldberg said.
“There’s a much greater push for fiscal responsibility. On one hand, I get it. On the other hand, the money’s still there. It doesn’t all have to go to sports licensing quite yet, God willing … Big games, where there is a massive need for science fiction and fantasy characters and worlds — you can tell those stories because in television it’s character driven, [whereas] in film it’s gonna be concept driven. If you’re going character driven, you can have those bigger, splashier moments.”
Story Kitchen is also developing film adaptations of acclaimed Hazelight games It Takes Two and Split Fiction for Amazon MGM.
Most notably, Story Kitchen is at the forefront of adapting viral experiences built within Roblox, with films for Grow a Garden, Steal a Brainrot and 99 Nights in the Forest in the works. Set up at 20th Century Studios, 99 Nights marks Disney’s return to licensing games for movies after many years spent prioritizing its own IP.
As for the rest of 2026, a second attempt at rebooting the Resident Evil films at Sony is due in September, a Street Fighter movie Sony sold to Paramount is due in October, and a third Angry Birds film, which also saw its IP license move from Sony to Paramount, will close out the year in December.
Paramount has more Sonic films set for the next two years and will be the first studio to adapt Call of Duty for the big screen in 2028, the same year A24 is bringing Elden Ring to theaters.
