When a property is successful, no matter what medium or format it’s in, it opens up opportunities for more success. For example, when a film is a success, it can build up the reputation of the director, the cast of the films, and could even get a sequel. For video games, success cannot only grant a lot of money and sequel opportunities but also, give you the chance to expand your profile to another medium. Which may be what’s happening with PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds.
To be clear, PlayerUnknown’s BattleGrounds is successful in every way that matters right now. It has over 30 million players on it between Steam and Xbox One, it had a successful enough full release on Steam recently, and it broke its own Steam record for most concurrent players at one time. So, what’s next? Well…Netflix? For in an interview with Inven Global, PUBG Corp CEO CH Kim revealed that they’ve gotten calls for expansion into other mediums:
We received a couple of love calls from a number of developers in Hollywood and Netflix. Our dream is to build a new game-based culture through various ways like this, and have the lead of that culture.”
Kim notes that his desire is to have the game reach out to as many mediums as it can, and this would go a long way to make that happen.
You have to wonder though how it would work as a film/TV series. Let’s just say they go to Netflix, how would it work? Well, the game is about 100 people being dropped on an island and forced to kill each other until only 1 is left. Even if scaled down (which would make it a little like Hunger Games), a movie might be too much. Instead, if they did like a 10-episode TV series, they could flesh out the characters, build the drama, and have a hit.
Of course, they haven’t confirmed this is happening as of yet, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it does happen.
