Story Kitchen, the Hollywood production company behind Tomb Raider and Sonic film/TV adaptations, has partnered with TinyBuild and Redemption Road Games to adapt the upcoming medieval time-travel action game, Kingmakers, into a live-action film.
Kingmakers made a huge splash on social media after its trailer debuted in February. The strategy game allows players to bring an arsenal of assault rifles, Humvees, and attack helicopters to war-torn medieval England, where they’ll assist Owain Glyndower’s 1401 Welsh Rebellion, via massive, simulated battles. Story Kitchen’s adaptation will ask the question: What if Braveheart included time travel?
TinyBuild, Redemption Road Games, and Story Kitchen will develop the film, aiming to tell a unique story and establish the intellectual property — essentially handling these tasks simultaneously rather than in a serial fashion.
Kingmakers, which has become a hugely anticipated viral sensation since its announcement trailer was released in February, is now in the top 20 most wishlisted games on Steam.
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“The action, world-building, and intriguing sci-fi of Kingmakers make it a perfect concoction to build a propulsive new franchise in Hollywood,” said Story Kitchen cofounder Dmitri M. Johnson. (Johnson, by the way, will be a speaker at our GamesBeat event in Los Angeles on December 12).
“We have always been massive fans of Tinybuild. As publishers, they’re putting out great games that we love playing. We’ve kept a close eye on the things they’re working on and have been trying to figure out the next best opportunity to collaborate with them,” said Johnson in an interview with GamesBeat.
Additionally, the partnership was aided by Moonrock, an experiential marketing agency that recently solidified a strategic partnership with Story Kitchen. John Benyamine and John Gaudiosi, the cofounders of Moonrock, bring decades of experience as former videogame journalists. Moonrock helped with the introduction to TinyBuild and its game devs.
“We are extremely pumped to be partnering with the team at Story Kitchen to adapt Kingmakers into a time-bending spectacle of a movie,” said Alex Nichiporchik, TinyBuild’s CEO.
An explosive trailer
While the trailer showed off amazing gameplay of using guns against medieval armies, I wondered if there was a lot of backstory. Both Nichiporchik and Goldberg said there is compelling lore behind the game as well. I wondered if it was inspired by Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, as there are similar scenes in that classic book.
But Nichiporchik said the inspiration was more like classic time travel stories where there are rules that you can break. And the game is based on real history.
“I’m talking about things like Back to the Future and those kind of time paradoxes and just being able to travel was like every six-year-old’s dream. How do you make a really interesting story out of that? What makes people excited about the game.”
Story Kitchen puts a lot of emphasis on developing such stories for film and TV, and Nichiporchik said it’s rare to have access to such producers while a game is still in the works. The game itself has a lot of sandbox elements to it, and that could make the narrative more complicated.
“This presents a very unique opportunity and challenge, to bring it to screens,” Nichiporchik said.
“When TinyBuild released the announcement trailer in February for Kingmakers, our minds were blown. Obviously the internet’s mind was blown as well. It was a brilliantly exciting idea for a game as well as for a movie,” said Mike Goldberg, cofounder of Story Kitchen, in an interview with GamesBeat. “Everyone wanted to push us together with TinyBuild and Redemption Road. It’s like the universe was dying to put us together to do this, and so we had an awesome meeting.”
“It’s going to be huge,” Johnson said. In addition to cool action, he said, “We chase character, story, unique worlds, and this had all of those elements. And to have the opportunity, like Alex said, to get in early for us, where others might be scared of that, we love it. It’s an opportunity to have this living, breathing, creative document.”
The aim is to synchronize the game and the linear media and give the franchise its best chance to succeed.
“The game remains the highest priority,” Johnson said. “We’re here to expand that world of the game.”
Slow cooked
The game has been in the works for close to five years, and much of the challenge was the technology. Could they field big armies and have them coexist with modern weapons on a battlefield?
“We’ve always been interested in bringing game stories to the large screen — or small screen — and we are in a very unique situation with both the film industry and the game industry,” Nichiporchik said. “In film, it’s really difficult to make a new IP that suddenly becomes big. But in games, you see this every month. You have IP and games that start blowing up and then companies can partner up to develop it in several media at once. That’s the opportunity.”
Nichiporchik added, “Next year and the year after, we’re going to start seeing much more of these true adaptations that capture everyone’s image and issue, starting with Sonic, the movie that, for me, was the turning point where I felt this can actually be done. And now with the Fallout series is just super essential.”
“What Alex and team have done is they’ve created a world. We’re drooling at the mouth because our instinct is probably to go film first. They’re building a universe,” Johnson said. “They’re building a world that can support film, TV, novels. Not just as a moneymaker, but for storytelling and for fans, and building out that rich world are all things to be excited about.”
As a producer, Story Kitchen works behind the scenes with the developers, building out a document that captures the spirit of the game for a movie, Goldberg. They call that an IP linear deck. Once they’re aligned creatively, then the linear work can get started. It’s a creative process.
“It all involves ideations from start to finish. From there, we then start approaching high level talent,” Goldberg said.
That includes a mix of screenwriters and filmmakers, producing partners, as well as on-camera talent, Goldberg said.
Story Kitchen is a dynamic media company specializing in universe building and franchise architecture; specializing in the adaptation of videogames and other non-traditional IP into film/TV.
Founded in 2022 by Sonic the Hedgehog co-producer Johnson and former APA agent/partner Mike Goldberg, alongside their veteran production and development executives, Timothy I. Stevenson and Dan Jevons.
Recent projects include adaptations of Crystal Dynamics’ iconic Tomb Raider franchise (live-action TV and film with Amazon MGM Studios and the animated TV series with Netflix), Just Cause for Universal Pictures with Ángel Manuel Soto directing and 87North co-producing, Sega’s 90s classics, Streets of Rage for Lionsgate with Escape Artists co-producing and Toejam & Earl for Amazon MGM Studios with Steph Curry co-producing as well as It Takes Two, for Amazon MGM Studios with Seven Bucks co-producing.
Finally, Story Kitchen has a Television first-look deal at Amazon MGM Studios as well as an Animated Film first-look deal at DreamWorks Animation.
Redemption Road is a game studio based in Atlanta. Its previous title is the much beloved game Road Redemption. The studio is focused on innovative gameplay that uses groundbreaking technology to tell compelling stories and create unique gaming experiences.
Story Kitchen has an animated Tomb Raider series coming out on Netflix on October 10.
“I’ve always kind of cringe when people say the word ‘transmedia,’ because going back to the 2010s era, a lot of people were claiming to be doing transmedia. They would put down a three-page sheet of like, build this world,” Johnson said.
Johnson pulled out a lore book for an IP that ended up being about 800 pages illustrating a timeline of movies, TV, graphic novels and more. That was the kind of work Johnson, and his colleague did when everyone was saying that video game movies were cursed. Johnson and Goldberg didn’t believe that.
“They were just being handled the wrong way. We believe that there was never a curse. It was just the wrong people producing them. And instead of agreeing with that, we set out to prove it. And it only took 20 years to get here,” Johnson said.
Not every game should be adapted into a movie or TV show. But the situation today is far better than it was. Johnson said that storytelling in games has advanced during that time where it can be compelling for film and TV.
“When there is an opportunity to collaborate with the talent, like what we get to do here, that’s a dream for us,” Johnson said.
“In my opinion, The Last of Us is a perfect story in video games,” said Nichiporchik. “Even the perfect story can be adapted perfectly to live action because I just love the giraffe scene and The Last of Us made me cry because I remember how it felt like in the game.”
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