According to Netflix, Castlevania animated series creator Adi Shankar is currently working on an adaptation of the enormously popular PlayerUnknown's Battleground or PUBG. Despite the game's incredible success, a full series adaptation seems like a herculean task for any showrunner, even one as proven as Shankar.
In the grand history of video game movies, there exists a massive and ever-growing pile of abandoned concepts, announced but never realized. From the Neil Blomkamp attempt at a Halo film whose death made way for District 9, to the wildly ambitious Tetris trilogy which has gone silent for half a decade, some projects never see the light of day, regardless how popular the source material. Is Shankar's PUBG doomed to the same fate?
PUBG is a 2017 multiplayer shooter which came from nowhere to become a huge smash hit and define the nascent Battle Royale genre. The game is one of the most played in the history of gaming, despite only being released 4 years ago. This titanic success shocked the industry and lead to the onslaught of Battle Royale style games over the past few years, a trend which is only now lightening up. The game is extremely simple, around a hundred players are airdropped onto a deserted island, corralled by a shrinking play area, and forced to scavenge for weapons and supplies to kill one another until only one survives. There is no narrative justification for this event in-game, nor is there much in the way of original aesthetic in the execution. As video games rife for adaptation go, PUBG's gameplay-focused, story-lite experience is not an easy pick. With that in mind, Netflix reached out to the best they had.
Adi Shankar is a showrunner, producer, and creator who has gained a powerful cult following for his unique style and particular sensibilities. Shankar is in an elite category of producers who have gained fame in their own right, as that role tends to be far from glamorous. He first appeared on the scene in the early 2010s with films like The Grey and Dredd. The films he produced varied wildly in quality and reception, but his personal style emerged in smaller projects.
Shankar's personal mythos began in 2012, with a series of unauthorized satirical short films in his Bootleg Universe. These include works like The Punisher: Dirty Laundry which stars Thomas Jane reprising his role from the 2004 film and The End Of Pokémon a dark animated take on the fantastical world and many more. Shankar is still best known for Castlevania, which was so fantastic it has slated him for several other video game adaptations for Netflix. He has repeatedly stated his desire to adapt Devil May Cry, which he is reportedly on track to do. Clearly, the strangest on the list is an adaptation of PUBG.
PUBG had basically no narrative in-game, but over the years, commercials, short films, text lore dumps, and other media have contributed to some sparse plot. The narrative centers around a man named Sergei Kalimnick, also known as The Russian. Sergei survived a violent massacre as a boy on the island of Erangel, became involved in organized crime, got rich selling snuff films and prison riot footage, and was paid handsomely by some shadowy investors to create a Battle Royale game.
The Russian is the man responsible for PUBG's games, but the story has expanded a bit past Erangel. The material teases a mysterious tech company, a global conspiracy, and a group of creepy masked people pulling the strings. The Russian's death games began with Eastern European prisoners, but expanded to a more eclectic clientele, a handful of which have been granted names and personalities. With these details, the bones of a PUBG adaptation begin to seem plausible.
One could make a film out of this existing game universe, a cynic might argue that several filmmakers already have made a film of the sort. From Battle Royale, the film that inspired the game to The Condemned, a barely remembered Stone Cold Steve Austin vehicle, this premise has made it to screen in the past. Dealing in animated series, however, is quite different than film. Even the shortest season of Castlevania is 94 minutes, decent length for a feature film, but the full seasons are multiple film lengths. It's quite a lot of time to fill with the material.
Ultimately, the quality of the source material has often had little to do with the cancellation of video game movies, save very obvious examples like the Tetris trilogy. PUBG is not the most original idea for a show, especially given the fact that it was inspired by an existing film. This is a common problem with video game movies, as so many games are inspired by existing subgenres of film, thus making a film adaptation redundant. It's unquestionable that Adi Shankar's specific style does not merge well with that of the Battle Royale juggernaut, but the Bootleg Universe has demonstrated his ability to bring new life to adaptations. Its an unoriginal concept, but if anyone can create something great from that jumping-off point, Shankar will find the angle.
The cruel hand of permanent shelving has come for wiser sounding projects than this one, but the popularity of the source and the reliability of the creator might keep this one in business. Shankar's PUBG will be a fascinating project, whether fans are discussing its success and failure or lamenting why it never made it to screen.