Annapurna Pictures has revealed that it is developing a movie based on Stray, BlueTwelve Studio’s third-person adventure game that lets players pretend they’re a cat in a cyberpunk city. According to an exclusive report from Entertainment Weekly, this will be an animated movie rather than a live-action one, somewhat of an expected choice based on the material and Annapurna’s more recent features, such as Nimona, now available to stream on Netflix. Stray was initially released for PS5|PS4 and PC in 2022 but reached Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One consoles last month.
“This is a game that’s all about what makes us human, and there are no humans in it,” said Robert Baird, who leads Annapurna Animation with Andrew Millstein. “It’s a buddy comedy about a cat and a robot, and there’s such a hilarious dynamic. So, there’s comedy inherent in this, but there’s not one human being in this movie. I think it’s one of the reasons why the game was incredibly popular, that you are seeing the world through the point of view of an adorable cat. How did they pull that off, and how are we going to pull that off in the movie? We will, even though sometimes it feels impossible, but we know that’s the essence of the game and the key to telling the story.”
Baird went on to say that there’s “something so emotional” that the creators are trying to capture when adapting the game to film. BlueTwelve, he explains, described the game as having a “sort of ‘hopepunk’ vibe,” a narrative concept that optimism is a form of resistance. “I love that term, hopepunk,” he says. “I think, if we are going to do this adaptation justice, this is going to be the first and greatest hopepunk movie that’s ever been made.”