Donald Glover will helm a live-action series based on ‘PUBG: Battlegrounds’ for Netflix. The creator of ‘Atlanta’ will not be merely its star: he will also serve as writer, director, and executive producer. These are four roles for an adaptation whose main question, at present, is how to turn a multiplayer survival match into a television story.
The South Korean publisher KRAFTON confirmed the project in a statement on October 30. The creative team will also include Stephen Glover, Donald’s brother and frequent collaborator, as writer and executive producer. Both worked on ‘Atlanta’, a series far removed from the game’s competitive structure, but which demonstrated its ability to switch genres and narrative registers.
Executive producers will also include Michael Schaefer for NEON TV, Fam Udeorji for Gilga, and Taeseok Jang and Sujin Lee for LV3H, KRAFTON’s entertainment division. The series is in development: plot, other cast members, production schedule and release date have not been announced. It has not been specified either how many episodes Glover will direct or write.
The challenge of adapting a battle royale without a closed story
‘PUBG’, originally released in 2017 as ‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’, helped popularize a now-familiar formula: up to a hundred participants drop onto a map, scavenge weapons and resources, and fight to stay alive as the safe zone shrinks. The match works because each player’s decision creates their own story, but that freedom doesn’t automatically translate to a series with fixed characters and scripted episodes.
Therein lies the most intriguing creative decision. An adaptation could focus on a group of survivors, on the origin of the competition, or on the people who organize it, but none of these options has been confirmed. To assume Netflix is preparing a version of ‘Squid Game’ with weapons would be jumping ahead of information the announcement does not provide.
Glover’s role is particularly meaningful due to the absence of a single narrative to bring to the screen. With ‘Atlanta’ he turned everyday situations into episodes of comedy, drama, and oddity; in ‘Mr. & Mrs. Smith’ for Prime Video, he worked with an action premise tied to the protagonists’ personal lives. His track record provides reasons to follow the adaptation, but it does not allow predicting the tone he will choose.
Netflix strengthens its catalog of video game adaptations
The project fits Netflix’s broader strategy, which blends animation and live action to bring interactive franchises to television. The company has already released Arcane and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and has projects in development such as Assassin’s Creed and the live-action series of Persona. Each game requires a different approach: it’s not the same to adapt an adventure with recognizable protagonists as a competition whose narrative arises from players’ behavior.
For KRAFTON there is also a business consideration. LV3H’s involvement shows their interest in extending PUBG beyond matches and turning a brand known for its gameplay into an audiovisual property with its own life. The presence of the game’s creator in the production does not guarantee the series’ fidelity, but it does confirm the company’s direct involvement.
For now, the big certainty is the team that will lead the project, not what we will see on screen. The adaptation will first have to decide which story is worth telling in a world where, until now, the essential thing was surviving the next match.
