Split Fiction is reportedly at the center of a bidding war for its movie rights

It looks like Split Fiction is headed to the big screen: Less than a month after the release of Hazelight Studios' latest hit co-op adventure, Variety says media company Story Kitchen is assembling writers, a cast, and a director in response to what the site calls a "bidding war" for the rights to turn the game into a movie.

We declared Split Fiction "one of the best co-op games around" in our 87% review, and it's been a big hit, selling more than one million copies in its first two days of release, a mark it hit significantly faster that its predecessor, It Takes Two, which took a month to achieve the same milestone and eventually went on to move an astonishing 20 million copies.

A film adaptation of that game was announced in 2022, with Hazelight working to make it happen in partnership with production company dj2 Entertainment—the former name of Story Kitchen.

So there's presumably some familiarity there, which no doubt helps grease the wheels, and Story Kitchen has more than a passing familiarity with games: Other adaptations in the works at the company include Sifu, Vampire Survivors, Dredge, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Kingmakers, Slime Rancher, and numerous others.

There's been no comment yet from Hazelight or studio founder Josef Fares, but given their history and Story Kitchen's inclination toward snapping up popular games for film and television adaptations, I'd say it's more than a little likely going to happen.

Whether or not it actually happens happens is another matter entirely. Plenty of projects like this die on the vine for one reason or another, and sometimes it's a very slow process: A Splinter Cell movie starring Tom Hardy was announced in 2012, for instance, and it wasn't until 2024 that producer Basil Iwanyk confirmed that it's all been canned. Such is the way of Hollywood, I suppose: It's a long process with many pitfalls along the way. For now, though, it's just nice to see Hazelight continuing to reap the rewards of its work.