Netflix Adapts Cult Military Time-Travel Game Into Ambitious Sci-Fi Epic
Netflix is adapting Kingmakers, a military time-travel action-strategy game, into an epic sci-fi feature, reuniting with producer Shawn Levy and 21 Laps as the streamer doubles down on its game-to-screen slate.
Netflix is diving back into the video game well, this time with Shawn Levy on board to turn the upcoming strategy title Kingmakers into a feature. If you like the sound of a modern soldier dropping into medieval England with a trunk full of guns, you are exactly the target audience here.
What Netflix just snapped up
The streamer grabbed a feature pitch inspired by Kingmakers, the sandbox action-strategy game from Redemption Road Games (with tinyBuild publishing). Christopher MacBride is writing the screenplay. The project came together through Netflix’s ongoing partnership with Levy’s 21 Laps, which developed the package alongside Story Kitchen and moved fast to lock it down.
So what is Kingmakers, exactly?
Think: war-torn medieval Great Britain, then add a present-day soldier who time-hops back with modern firepower and vehicles to rewrite history and stop an apocalypse. The game sells itself on massive, real-time simulated battles. If the movie aims to match that scale, expect big battlefield spectacle to be front and center.
Who is doing what behind the scenes
- Producers: Shawn Levy and Dan Levine for 21 Laps
- Producers: Dmitri M. Johnson, Michael Lawrence Goldberg, and Timothy L. Stevenson for Story Kitchen
- Screenplay: Christopher MacBride
- Development oversight: Emily Feher for 21 Laps
- Supervising: Elena Sandoval for Story Kitchen
- Executive producers: tinyBuild’s Alex Nichiporchik and Jon Carnage
The game is delayed, but the movie is moving
There’s a twist: the adaptation is rolling while the actual game got delayed. The studio says it is holding the line on scope rather than cutting corners to hit an early date. Their words:
"In short, it’s an incredibly ambitious, uncompromising game, and we don’t want to cut any planned features, for the sake of getting it out the door earlier."
Where this fits in the bigger picture
Netflix has been stacking game-to-screen projects, and 21 Laps is a familiar collaborator. The company is still executive producing Netflix’s Stranger Things as it heads into its final stretch, and it’s producing Star Wars: Starfighter, directed by Levy and starring Ryan Gosling. Meanwhile, Story Kitchen is busy on other game adaptations like Tomb Raider, Life is Strange, and Just Cause.
Plot specifics for the Kingmakers movie are still under wraps, but the core hook is right there: time travel, medieval mayhem, and modern hardware. It’s a clean, chaotic premise that could translate into a very loud night at the movies.