{"id":1173970,"date":"2026-02-13T13:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polygon.com\/?p=556979"},"modified":"2026-02-13T13:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T13:12:14","slug":"the-era-of-the-bad-video-game-movie-is-over-if-hollywood-lets-these-guys-do-their-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/the-era-of-the-bad-video-game-movie-is-over-if-hollywood-lets-these-guys-do-their-job\/","title":{"rendered":"The era of the bad video game movie is over, if Hollywood lets these guys do their job"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Hollywood has finally cracked the code on making movies based on video games, at least from a box-office perspective. The Super Mario Bros. Movie<\/a><\/em>, the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy<\/a>, and A Minecraft Movie<\/a><\/em> have grossed billions combined since 2020. Whether they\u2019re good movies<\/em> is up for debate. Critically, TV seems to be where game adaptations are shining; Fallout<\/a><\/em> and The Last of Us<\/a><\/em> are legit prestige television, likely in part due to the close creative involvement of the people who make those games and producers who adore the source material<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two producers fighting to improve the quality of video game adaptations are Dmitri M. Johnson and Mike Goldberg, otherwise known as Story Kitchen<\/a>. They\u2019ve been working for years to make game adaptations better, or at a bare minimum, more authentic to creators\u2019 visions and to the people who play those games. Story Kitchen\u2019s work includes the Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise, the first film of which was famously delayed in response to fan criticism<\/a> but wound up winning fans over.<\/p>\n

In recent years, Story Kitchen\u2019s Goldberg and Johnson have gone into overdrive, locking down movie and TV deals for adaptations based on Tomb Raider, It Takes Two<\/em>, Streets of Rage, and Just Cause. But the production company is just getting started, Goldberg and Johnson tell Polygon. In addition to getting indies into the mix, with upcoming adaptations of games like Sifu<\/a><\/em> and Dredge<\/a><\/em>, Story Kitchen is developing at least 10 projects for Sega in the wake of Sonic\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

Polygon recently spoke to Goldberg and Johnson about their production company and what it\u2019s working on \u2014 which includes a few surprises still to be announced. Read on for our full conversation, which has been edited for clarity.<\/p>\n

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Mike Goldberg:<\/strong> We launched the production company [for] film and TV two and a half years ago. We specialize in sourcing, partnering, and working to adapt nontraditional IP into film and TV. When we say \u201cnontraditional IP,\u201d we are referring to video game IP. How this all came about was primarily off the heels of dj2 Entertainment, [which] Dmitri launched with the same thesis in mind. It was early days, and video game adaptations weren\u2019t really a thing. They were attacked in the press. They were attacked in the media. Fans weren\u2019t responding, and Dmitri didn\u2019t believe, he thought a meaningful way was a field trip to Japan to finagle a meeting with the C-suite of Sega and to discuss with Sega their thoughts on finally unlocking [Sonic the Hedgehog] for film.<\/p>\n

At the time it was not at the top of their bucket list, but after years of campaigning […] now we have the Sonic franchise.<\/p>\n

Fast-forward to launching Story Kitchen: I resigned from my agency to do it with Dmitri. Thanks to him, I was the No. 1 agent for video game IP into film and TV. I think I had 80 deals done from repping Atari, Square Enix, and Bandai Namco to the Tomb Raider deal \u2014\u00a0twice over as first we sold animated Tomb Raider in 2019 […] and the live-action franchise built at Amazon […] the Phoebe Waller-Bridge live-action tentpole series that\u2019s in pre-production.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[Ed. note:<\/strong> After our interview, reports<\/a> have suggested that Waller-Bridge\u2019s live-action Tomb Raider project is no longer moving forward at Amazon. We checked in with Story Kitchen, which said, \u201cThe show is not dead and still tracking forward.\u201d]<\/p>\n

So to that end, we have an Amazon television first-look deal and a DreamWorks Animation film first-look deal. We\u2019re external consultants, if you will. We have these shortcuts, but it\u2019s great because we get additional intel and support if there\u2019s a game that makes sense to bring into them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We love our indies, we love our AAAs, and it\u2019s having the pleasure of working with everyone from Poncle with Vampire Survivors<\/em> to Black Salt Games with Dredge<\/em>. This conversation came out of Sifu<\/em>, and that was such an extraordinary experience. We sold that game as a movie to Netflix during the double strikes of 2023. The writers and the actors were on the picket lines, and we\u2019re like, OK, we can\u2019t do much<\/em>, but we\u2019re talking to Netflix and [told them], Hey, there\u2019s this game that\u2019s extraordinary from a very young game developer and a very young game publisher, Sloclap and Kepler<\/em>. And within less than five business days, they\u2019re like, I love it. Let\u2019s do it as a movie<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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This morning [we were] catching up with our writer, Chad Stahelski, and Netflix to really ensure that Sifu<\/em> remains on the fast track for this year. Kepler was so impressed with us that they called us and they\u2019re like, All right, here\u2019s our slate until 2027. You guys did a great job. What are you excited about?<\/em> And that\u2019s what led us to [Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em>], which we just announced we are doing a couple weeks ago. That game is awesome; we have played it. It comes out April 24, and we\u2019ve already done one massive attachment that hasn\u2019t been announced, but we\u2019re hoping to have another attachment in the next two weeks, and then we can announce our live-action film package around it. But it\u2019s for the love of games and authentically connecting those dots.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dmitri Johnson:<\/strong> As much as we love and are grateful for the Tomb Raiders and the Sonics, we really do kind of live in the indie space. This goes back to even before Sonic<\/em> came out: I was fortunate, and I don\u2019t even honestly remember how it started, but I somehow got on the radar of the Swedish government. And every quarter, they would fly me over, and I would give talks on my thesis on taking games into film and TV. What that exposed me to, long before the rest of Hollywood, was the incredible hub of talent in the Nordics. So just getting to know those developers and those creators, the storytelling that was happening there was just mind-blowing. And Hollywood at the time was still very much driven by, How many copies did it sell? How much money did it make?<\/em><\/p>\n

We finally got to a point of: Don\u2019t care; don\u2019t ask anymore. Here\u2019s why it\u2019s a great story. Here\u2019s why it\u2019s a unique world. These are things we don\u2019t currently have in film and TV. That\u2019s why we\u2019re excited.<\/em> Over time we kind of trained [Hollywood], so at least on our side, we don\u2019t get that question anymore. Now it\u2019s totally about the creative, just like a producer who goes after New York Times bestsellers or comic books, graphic novels, [and] spec scripts \u2014 it\u2019s about the creative. I tell everyone that it\u2019s almost easier to get a deal done with the billion-dollar publishers than the indies because there\u2019s so much more on the line [for indies]. It\u2019s so much more personal. There\u2019s a certain level of trust that has to be built over years, over decades. Fast-forward to today, we\u2019re just in this incredible moment of really getting to live out our childhood dreams. I think we\u2019re in various stages of development on 10 separate Sega properties together\u00a0\u2014 just dream projects.<\/p>\n

Polygon: Obviously, Sonic the Hedgehog was a pretty big success story for you. What do you identify as the DNA that made that successful?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Johnson:<\/strong> <\/strong>It\u2019s all about the village you built. Sonic is such a special village because everyone involved had their own connection to the IP, grew up playing those games. It is driven by passion. Before Mike was our agent, in a weird cosmic coincidence, he repped the [Sonic the Hedgehog<\/em>] writers separately. They were Sega kids, and they were passionate about the IP. So no one was going into it like, Let\u2019s go make a billion-dollar franchise<\/em>. Selfishly, we wanted to see this movie made for ourselves. We wanted to see a Sonic movie made the right way. We knew not only could it change the landscape for game adaptations, but again, if it\u2019s the only one that got done, we got to make a Sonic movie. And that was kind of the driver on that.<\/p>\n

I think we approach all of these in the same way. Phoebe Waller-Bridge [making Tomb Raider], people are surprised, like, Wow, that\u2019s kind of random<\/em>. No, it\u2019s not. She was a superfan. Her parents had to take her PlayStation away because she played for two weeks straight. So it\u2019s finding those people. ToeJam and Earl, we\u2019re out to a director right now who rapped about ToeJam in one of his songs. We try to do our research to find out who might be a kind of prebuilt fan, start there, and really build out just a village of passion. Now we like to say, You don\u2019t have to be a gamer. You don\u2019t have to have played these games<\/em>. We do get great work from people who haven\u2019t. But it definitely does create that special something when that can happen.<\/p>\n

In terms of approaching other Sega properties, what\u2019s that work been like for you in terms of adapting? I\u2019m a Shinobi fan, but even I\u2019m kind of wondering, What is a Shinobi movie?<\/em> What is a Streets of Rage movie? <\/em>It\u2019s a little harder to identify that than a Sonic the Hedgehog movie.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Johnson:<\/strong> The Shinobi script is one of my favorite scripts we\u2019ve developed. It is going to be so fun. We do a little bit of fan service for Shinobi fans; they\u2019re going to be hyped for it. But my mom, who didn\u2019t play Shinobi, she\u2019s also going to be hyped. It\u2019s going to be a great action film that has layers. Sam Hargrave<\/a> wants to do some crazy shit that I personally want to see him pull it off. I\u2019m like, I don\u2019t know how you\u2019re going to do that, but I want to see it<\/em>. I want to be there.<\/p>\n

Goldberg:<\/strong> He\u2019s our director. He came up in the John Wick camp, and then he directed Extraction<\/em> and Extraction 2<\/em>. And he\u2019s doing Matchbox<\/em><\/a> right now. It should be, if timing aligns, his next movie.<\/p>\n

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Johnson:<\/strong> It\u2019s a really special script. We have a writer who grew up in Japan, but he also split his time between here and London. That\u2019s reflected in the script. To have a writer who could actually pitch Sega Japan in Japanese<\/em> was really, really cool.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Streets of Rage<\/em> has been number one on my list since I was 11 or 12. I remember being a kid, thinking, I\u2019m going to make that a movie one day<\/em>. The thing that both [Streets of Rage and Shinobi] have in common, the soundtrack \u2014 as a preteen, I just remember thinking, These are so cinematic. These are actual movie scores.<\/em><\/p>\n

The breakfast that I had this morning, when Mike was on with Chad and Netflix, was with the potential director for Streets of Rage<\/em>, and half of the conversation was about music. It was, As important as the action scenes are going to be, the music has to hit<\/em>. I go back to the original Mortal Kombat<\/em> film: From the first second, the New Line logo comes out [and] you hear that \u201cMortal Kombat!\u201d \u2014 you\u2019re just on a ride for the rest of the 90 minutes. I feel like we\u2019ve got to do that with Streets of Rage<\/em>. Shinobi<\/em>, different type of soundtrack, but equally important.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I would say the thing about Sega is, they keep us honest. Each time we spark with an idea of what we want to do next, we have to talk through it. We have to go through our approach and really make a case for why it should exist.<\/p>\n

Goldberg:<\/strong> In our opinion, it\u2019s authenticity. Because every game should not be adapted. We are asking ourselves three questions:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Should the game be adapted, period? <\/li>\n
  2. And if so, should the game be adapted now<\/em>?<\/li>\n
  3. If so, what medium should it be? Is it a live-action film? Is it live-action TV? Is it an animated film? Is it animated TV? <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    [We\u2019re] always challenging ourselves to answer those questions and then match up authentic fans, honest ways to do it, no trickery. Clearly, there was a massive rejection when [previous video game] adaptations felt like a big commercial. That did not go well, and gamers are the first ones to call it out. So it shouldn\u2019t be that way. It should be, if I were to make a dream come true and we were to see an expansion of a story, […] what would be the dopest way to expand that story? That is part of the process that we\u2019re always pushing to solve.<\/p>\n

    Johnson:<\/strong> To the point of authenticity: A lot of times, contractually we\u2019re not allowed to argue or debate with the internet, but I remember when Disco Elysium<\/em> was announced, it was like, Oh my god, how are they making it a movie? The game\u2019s not even out yet.<\/em> What you want to say is, \u201cWe\u2019ve been working side by side with them for two years. We\u2019ve read the almost-500-page game script from front to back. We\u2019ve heard the entire soundtrack. We\u2019ve played the game multiple times.\u201d Those are things you can\u2019t say [publicly], but we always start from that authentic place. We play everything we get behind. Ideally, we can consume and read everything that we can. We really want to know these things inside and out. And like Mike said, sometimes the takeaway is, I\u2019m so excited for this game. It doesn\u2019t need to be a movie. It doesn\u2019t need to be a TV show.<\/em> But when it kind of triggers that special thing like [Clair Obscur: Expedition 33<\/em>] did, yes, you get excited, and you start thinking about the filmmakers who can make this thing a reality.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    What is <\/strong>Disco Elysium<\/em><\/strong> going to be? Is that going to be a movie? A TV show? Live action? Animated? What\u2019s the thought on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Goldberg:<\/strong> So there was a significant pause on that exploration while the co-founders worked through their legal quagmire […] to give them the space to do that for the last few years. [ZA\/UM is] back, they\u2019re ready to rock. We sat with them and we are now getting reengaged with being able to reopen those conversations and explorations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    We actually had incoming offers to do it as a film and TV show, and we were working with them to dial down into [their] preferences. We had to pull back when the unfortunate things that everyone has read about started to occur \u2014 as we should! And honestly, even if we wanted to put our fingers in our ears and ignore it, it would\u2019ve been the wrong thing to do to them. And also a chain-of-title perspective. It just would\u2019ve made things more complicated. We had to ramp down, and now we\u2019re so excited to be ramping back up.<\/p>\n

    Johnson:<\/strong> But to answer you, the conversations before all that were definitely around live action.<\/p>\n

    You both talked a little bit about finding fans and finding authentic participants who were excited about the intellectual property. But for something like <\/strong>Dredge<\/em><\/strong>, <\/strong>Kingmakers<\/em><\/strong>, or <\/strong>Sifu<\/em><\/strong> \u2014 which don\u2019t have a long legacy, which don\u2019t have multiple stories to draw from \u2014 what\u2019s that process like of finding talent and interested parties to make that kind of material?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Johnson:<\/strong> Those are the ones we\u2019re proudest of. We prefer to get in front of a game\u2019s release, which, again, isn\u2019t really the way Hollywood used to do it. It\u2019s much easier to say, \u201cThis made a billion dollars.\u201d We like to say we don\u2019t chase heat, but we enjoy it when it follows. One of the best examples of that was It Takes Two<\/em>. That was a game that we fell in love with. We flagged for Hollywood, like, Hey, you want to be involved with this? Come in now<\/em>. They waited for it to release and win all the awards, and then every studio in town wanted it. After that exercise, we have gained a lot of trust and goodwill in the industry, where now, when we flag something, we\u2019re treated a bit more like tastemakers, and we kind of get the attention of agents, managers, writers, [and] directors, and it at least opens up a conversation.<\/p>\n

    If the conversation leads to more interest, that\u2019s when we slowly start bringing them into the village. So if there\u2019s a game that\u2019s not coming out for another year and a half, two years, [we say], Come over to the house. Let\u2019s play through it together. Let\u2019s talk through it<\/em>. We\u2019ll put together shareable materials. We really help throw them in there with us and really start understanding what it is. Because again, we don\u2019t want talent [or] studio partners to just come in because because of how it sold. We really want our partners to love it for the right reason.<\/p>\n

    Goldberg:<\/strong> I’ll put on a former agent hat. What\u2019s ridiculous is, New York Times bestselling books typically start at the lower end of the spectrum, somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000 units sold. […] The New York Times bestselling list is great, and Hollywood goes insane for it. But if you look at an indie game, even an indie game that\u2019s, like, a basement garage dev and it\u2019s his or her or their first game, and that game comes out, and it\u2019ll sell tens or hundreds of thousands of copies, millions of copies. Not just in English and [in] North America; these [are] indie games that are selling in multiple languages, multiple countries.<\/p>\n

    So we remind our friends, the buyers on the film and TV side, You\u2019re willing to go after a New York Times bestselling property, or a manuscript that has not yet published. Why would you be hesitant to wait to see how the game does?<\/em> It makes no sense to us. [\u2026] The buying executives having come up with us now, that were assistants with us and junior executives with us, that also had Ataris or Nintendos or Segas, PlayStations, [Xboxes], that started the process at the same time \u2014 they get it. We can poke holes in that concept all day long, because for a game to be produced and then be shipped, there\u2019s going to be game scripts, there\u2019s going to be game bibles; we get \u2019em all, as Dimitri was saying. There\u2019s going to be playable builds, or even vertical slices we will share if we can.<\/p>\n

    But we bring the onboarding materials in. If you\u2019re going to take a bet on that book, why would you not take a bet on something that is audiovisual, and probably going to do it outstandingly better than that book? So it\u2019s been a bit of retraining everyone and adjusting the narrative. And Hollywood has become a lot more flexible, accepting. And when they don\u2019t listen to us \u2014\u00a0like Dmitri\u2019s example of It Takes Two<\/em> \u2014 we make them financially pay for it, to their detriment and our rights holders\u2019 benefit. [laughs<\/em>]<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    I wanted to ask about the original Sonic the Hedgehog<\/em> showing, and how there was a lot of strong pushback to that. How do you factor in that kind of feedback from that incident? How has that factored into your work, in terms of setting up projects and talking to studios and creatives to convey, Here\u2019s what you actually need to do with this project to make it authentic<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Johnson:<\/strong> I\u2019ll answer that in a more broad, general way, to not get us in trouble. Look, that was a period in time where I think Hollywood thought they knew better than the folks who made the game, the thing that we were excited about in the first place. I think that\u2019s how we got the original [Super Mario Bros.<\/em>] movie<\/a>. I think that\u2019s how we got some of those awful, awful, awful early adaptations \u2014\u00a0they would take the rights and kind of shove the talent to the side. We flipped that on its head. After Sonic<\/em>, that definitely changed the pushback that we had, and the pushback we could do on behalf of our game partners.<\/p>\n

    So, one of the exercises I like to point to is how we handled Tomb Raider. The original Tomb Raider films, [the creatives] largely felt like they were not as much a part of that conversation as they would\u2019ve liked. So the first thing we did [with Tomb Raider] was, we flew up to Crystal Dynamics several times, and spent hours just filling up whiteboards: Lara Croft is this. She\u2019s not this. We\u2019re going to touch on this. We\u2019re not going to touch on this.<\/em> And we ended up with this exercise that really created this creative sandbox, and it was really effective. If our game partners are too busy focusing on the next game, they knew that their vision, that their concerns, were documented. In the case of Crystal, they have more resources than others. So we actually have had dedicated teammates. But for the smaller indie studios, that exercise has been extremely key for protecting their voice. The other thing we do is, we get them a seat at the table. Pre-Sonic 1<\/em>, there was a lot of lip service: Oh, we are going to be a partner.<\/em> And then, again, they show up to the movie and it\u2019s unrecognizable [to them].<\/p>\n

    We fight for our partners on the gaming side to get producing credit. And that\u2019s not just so that they can see their name on the screen, or make some producing money. It\u2019s so that, legally, they\u2019re part of every conversation. If we\u2019re talking actors, actresses; if we\u2019re getting movie outlines, TV outlines; they\u2019re seeing it in real time. So we treat them like a real partner, with a real seat at the table. And what we do is, we try to do a delicate dance making both sides clear upfront: We have to make the best film, we have to make the best TV, but we\u2019re going to do it while honoring our partners and their original vision as much as possible<\/em>.<\/p>\n

    What\u2019s next? What\u2019s closest to filming, coming to completion? Talk to me about the slate and how things are kind of jelling.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Goldberg:<\/strong> I\u2019m trying to think of what has already been messaged out there. In addition to having Tomb Raider in production right now, animated and live action, there\u2019s a couple that are moving so fast, but we haven\u2019t officially announced yet. We have some big things planned to announce. It feels like 2025 is going to be a pretty extraordinary year. There\u2019s a lot of fantastic momentum. <\/p>\n

    Johnson:<\/strong> I will tell you this: Sifu<\/em> is tracking incredibly well. We\u2019re super excited about that. The same with Shinobi<\/em>; it\u2019s moving unbelievably fast. There\u2019s Just Cause<\/em> with Universal that we\u2019ve announced. It Takes Two<\/em>, which the Sonic writers are adapting for us \u2014 such a wonderful adaptation of that. We are really excited about how that one\u2019s coming together. Ruiner<\/a><\/em>, the indie game that we\u2019re doing with Wes Ball, who directed all the Maze Runner movies and did [Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes<\/em>] and is going to do [The Legend of Zelda<\/em>]<\/a> \u2014 we have a draft.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    Those are things that are announced. Then there\u2019s things that haven\u2019t been announced, but when they\u2019re announced, they\u2019ll be announced with speed. They\u2019re primarily TV-facing, but they\u2019re huge, break-the-internet type of announcements that our nerdoms are exploding on \u2014 and we can\u2019t believe it hasn\u2019t leaked. Then there\u2019s the new things we\u2019re putting together. We are so close to getting our Vampire Survivors<\/em> package out and our Dredge<\/em> package out. Our last 24 hours have been consumed [by] Hazelight\u2019s new game, Split Fiction<\/a><\/em>, that has done extraordinarily well since the game came out. We are in the middle of it with Hazelight, [and] we have a massive [meeting] in a few minutes with someone who could be one of the two characters for the movie. It\u2019s unbelievable.<\/p>\n

    One of the projects we\u2019re most excited about is with Brooklyn\u2019s own (by way of London) Sam Barlow. We\u2019re putting together Her Story<\/a><\/em>, which is a passion project.\u00a0<\/p>\n

    Goldberg:<\/strong> Sam is so unbelievable as a game developer. [We think] it should be a movie, as a tight, twisty concept. It\u2019s an intimate movie, and we\u2019ve been building our village for that.<\/p>\n

    Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Hollywood has finally cracked the code on making movies based on video games, at least from a box-office perspective. The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, and A Minecraft Movie have grossed billions combined since 2020. Whether they\u2019re good movies is up for debate. Critically, TV seems to be where game adaptations are shining; Fallout and The Last of Us are legit prestige television, likely in part due to the close creative involvement of the people who make those games and producers who adore the source material. Two producers fighting to improve the quality of video game adaptations are Dmitri M. Johnson and Mike Goldberg, otherwise known as Story Kitchen. They\u2019ve been working for years to make game adaptations better, or at…<\/p>\n

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