Once upon a time, Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft were all reportedly set to get their own Netflix shows, but Activision Blizzard's 2020 lawsuit against the streaming giant seemingly stopped those plans.
Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier hosted an 'ask me anything' session on Reddit yesterday ahead of the release of his book about Blizzard Entertainment, and was asked if he had any insight into why Blizzard hasn't ventured far into the world of TV and movies (2016's Warcraft movie adaptation aside). According to the reporter, the company once had several projects in the works with Netflix.
"The book reveals that they had series in development with Netflix for StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo," Schreier begins. "But, uh…"
Unfortunately, for anyone hoping to see the likes of Tracer and Winston being buddies and hanging out on their own Netflix show, it's a big but. Schreier shares a link to an old Variety story covering the news of Activision Blizzard filing lawsuit against Netflix after allegedly hiring its former chief financial officer Spencer Neumann when he was less than two years into a contract that agreed he'd be employed by Activision for three years. Activision claimed at the time it had also been granted the right to extend Neumann's contract to four years.
Needless to say, Activision Blizzard wasn't thrilled, and at the time, it sought compensatory damages, a permanent injunction to stop Netflix from "soliciting Activision's employees who are subject to valid fixed-term agreements or inducing such employees to breach their valid fixed-term employment agreements," consequential damages, and more.
In the Reddit thread, Schreier didn't elaborate on whether the plans for the supposed StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo Netflix series have been canceled for good or how far through development they were in the first place, but the legal dispute would certainly explain why we haven't seen anything come of them. It'll be interesting to see if any of the three game franchises ever get their own TV adaptations – after all, Diablo boss Rod Fergusson recently said he thinks the action RPG "could translate very well" to that format.
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