Sonic movie producers are psyched about Tomb Raider, a Streets of Rage film.. and a Planet of Lana one?

PLUS: Encouraging words from Capcom about Pragmata's future, and from Niantic about Pikmin Bloom's present. All of this from iicon in Las Vegas.

Planet of Lana. Screenshot: Wishfully, Thunderful

LAS VEGAS — Sonic The Hedgehog was great, but that’s not the Sega gaming franchise that Hollywood producer Dmitri Johnson most wanted to adapt into a movie when he started courting the Japanese game giant years ago.

“Sonic was the gateway drug to get Streets of Rage, and we’re finally making that come true,” he said during a panel in Las Vegas at the inaugural iicon event.

Johnson is the co-founder of video-game focused TV/movie production house Story Kitchen. On stage, he raved about the classic Sega brawler series as he explained to an audience of gaming executives (and some non-gaming ones) how Story Kitchen tries to turn video games into shows and films.

“When people ask us now, like, ‘How do you find [video game intellectual property] that you go after for any projects?,’ we selfishly say, ‘We’re trying to make stuff for ourselves,’” he said.

Streets of Rage, Johnson said, was a prime example. When he was pitching Sega years ago on the first Sonic movie, it was rooted in his love for Sonic but also his hopes to make a Street of Rage movie.

Musical aside: During the panel, Johnson also raved that Streets of Rage–the second one, he later emphasized to me–has “the greatest video game soundtrack of all time”. Judge for yourself…

“I almost broke news,” Johnson added, as he discussed the Streets of Rage movie project. But he caught himself. “There will be news,” he said, soon. It’ll involve some “exciting talent around that one.”

Attendees of this iicon event might be forgiven for assuming Story Kitchen is trying to turn every game into a movie or show, because they sure have a lot of ongoing efforts to mention. There’s their hit Sonic movies, upcoming projects involving Sega’s Shinobi and Toejam & Earl and efforts around breakout Roblox platform hits Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot. Story Kichen’s official list of projects also includes Sleeping Dogs, Vampire Survivors, Sifu and many more. Some will actually get made, but it’s Hollywood, so keep those expectations in check, of course.

For their talk, the Story Kitchen team wanted to emphasize the extent to which they try to work with writers, directors and actors who really understand the games—and how they’ve tried to normalize getting game-makers themselves involved in the process.

To underscore those points, Story Kitchen co-founder Mike Goldberg brought up his team’s efforts this very week to get a movie going based on the beautiful 2023 post-robot-invasion side-scrolling game Planet of Lana.