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PUBG Corporation CEO Eyes Hollywood and Netflix

PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS was one of the biggest hit titles in 2017, having sold 24 million copies worldwide while still in early access. After six months of anticipation, PUBG was officially released in December and its developer, PUBG Corporation, has plans to expand the franchise. The company’s CEO, Chang Han Kim, revealed he has received phone calls from Hollywood and Netflix to create content based on the game.

Chang also hinted that PUBG will only be available for PC and Xbox One for the near future, but PS4 owners will have to be patient.

In an interview with South Korea’s InvenGlobal, Chang Han Kim stated that his goal is to make PUBG a global media franchise. Specifically, he said that the game can be translated into “movies, drama, cartoons, animation, and more.” This could happen sooner than later as he claimed to have “received a couple of calls from a number of developers in Hollywood and Netflix.”

A Hollywood studio bringing PUBG to movie theaters could very well be successful. The three video game movie adaptations of the past two years showed that there is space in cinema for video game titles. Warcraft amassed $434 million in box office revenue, while Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and Assassin’s Creed grossed $312 million and $241 million respectively.

The discussion around video games being brought to film is usually not about the financial success, however. During the past few years, gaming-inspired movies had good box office runs. The discussion revolves around quality, though, as a video game adaptation has never received overwhelmingly positive review by critics.

During the interview, Chang also hinted that PUBG will only be available for PC and Xbox One for the near future, however PS4 owners will have to be patient. “We’d like to focus on completing the Xbox One PUBG for now. If we have the opportunity, the final goal would be to launch the title on every platform. Early Access on Steam and Game Preview on Xbox One are like pre-release, so they don’t have a restriction on quality. However, PlayStation is very strict about this,” he said.

While a PS4 release is not in the company’s immediate plans, PUBG Corporation and Bluehole Studios have partnered with Tencent to create a mobile version, not only in China (where Tencent has the exclusive distribution rights and will even launch a spin-off mobile game) but also worldwide

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