When Overwatch launched in 2016, it drew in a lot of players who would normally never play a competitive first-person shooter. Part of the draw came from its innovative take on shooter gameplay, but a large part was because of its characters. Overwatch’s diverse cast is packed with heroes with interesting backstories and incredible designs. Since the early days of the game, developer Blizzard Entertainment’s drip-feed of details about its characters has had players demanding more fleshed-out stories. So it’s not all that suprising to learn there was actually an Overwatch TV adaptation in the works with Netflix — until Blizzard reportedly tanked it.
This news comes from Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, who recently held a Reddit AMA to promote his upcoming book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. As first shared by Overwatch Cavalry on social media, Schreier revealed that Blizzard was working with Netflix on adaptations for not only Overwatch, but also Starcraft and Diablo. In the same post, however, Schreier links to a 2020 Variety report that Activision Blizzard was suing Netflix for allegedly poaching chief financial officer Spencer Neumann, implying that the series fell apart after the suit.
