Paramount puts Cyberpunk 2077 behind Street Fighter and Call of Duty on its game-film slate

Anyone who bought Cyberpunk 2077 for PlayStation in 2020 got a game so buggy that it was pulled from the PlayStation store ^[7]. After that, players stayed. The game recovered from that launch and has sold more than 40 million copies, CD Projekt Red recently said ^[9]. Gizmodo credits the fixes and the anime adaptation with reinvigorating the franchise ^[8]. Cyberpunk's record shows that its world has already held an audience outside games, in an anime.

Paramount's pitch is a slate. Gizmodo called the live-action Cyberpunk film ^[1] the studio's "third major video game IP grab of late" ^[2], after Street Fighter, which opens October 16, and a Call of Duty film for 2028 ^[4]. The Cyberpunk project is at an earlier stage. It has producers attached and, alone among the three, no release date ^[17].

The reports support only a modest version of the idea that a game's value now includes what it can license outside games. They show one studio collecting three game properties ^[2] and one game that an adaptation helped revive ^[8]. How much Paramount paid, and whether a film changes anyone's valuation of the franchise, is outside what either outlet reported. Even the property's size is disputed. The Verge calls Cyberpunk a huge success for CD Projekt Red ^[9]. Gizmodo's writer wrote, "Sure, it's sold tens of millions of copies, but it still feels kind of niche" ^[15].

CD Projekt Red is producing alongside Lorenzo di Bonaventura, according to Gizmodo ^[5]. I think the producer seat is the right call for the company that made the game. The tradeoff is that a shared credit ties the studio to decisions it will not make alone. Gizmodo's writer said the film is "going to have to have an incredible script and visionary director" ^[16], and a producer credit puts CD Projekt Red's name on both.

For a studio deciding whether to license a game world to film, two tests sort the options. One is whether the world has already held an audience outside games. The other is whether the game's maker is a producer or only a licensor. Cyberpunk passes both: the anime shows its audience is proven ^[11], and CD Projekt Red is a producer ^[5]. A proven world licensed without a producer seat hands the brand to someone else's judgement. An unproven world with the maker producing spends studio attention on an experiment, and an unproven world licensed outright earns a fee with no say in the result.