Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft adaptations were reportedly in the works at Blizzard and Netflix, before, whoops, the former ended up suing the latter
You know how things go, sometimes you're doing a group project, then someone files a lawsuit against someone else, and by the end nobody knows if you've passed.
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Blizzard reportedly had adaptations of Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft in the works with Netflix prior to it filing a lawsuit against the streaming giant in 2020.
This is according to Bloomberg's Jason Schreier, who's still in the midst of promoting his upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, and has moved on from appearing on podcasts to hosting Reddit AMAs.
As part of the latter on r/wow, Schreier was asked by one fan "Any insights into why Blizzard hasn't branched out into Movies/TV/animation? Yeah the 2016 Warcraft film happened.. but It seems strange how in the 20+ years of WoW and an even longer history of Blizzard's story heavy IPs they've been incredibly light on expanding from games.. WoW books, short lived comic series..Are they trying at all?"
His response: "The book reveals that they had series in development with Netflix for StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo. But uh..." Don't worry, the line didn't end there, with Schreier going on to provide a link to a Variety story about Activision Blizzard filing that lawsuit against Netflix.
What did the suit allege, you ask? Well, that Netflix had, in ActiBlizz' view, shown “contempt” for California state employment law when it hired away Spencer Neumann to be its CFO. Activision Blizzard, which fired Neumann over the issue, argued that the streaming giant had hired him when he was less than two years into a three-year contract in his prior role as ActiBlizz CFO.
So, yep. Corporate grumbling over the moving of suits around the entertainment industry in ways that may or may not breach the terms of their contracts, by the looks of it.
If the undetermined, but not looking rosy, fate of these adapatations has you feeling down, make sure to check out what Schreier also recently said about Blizzard reportedly having another StarCraft shooter in the works.