According to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg journalist who’s publishing an entire novel on the inner workings of Blizzard, the company was in talks with Netflix about creating a series based on the game.
Overwatch 2’s lore is something players have become deeply attached to over the years, but also something that we’ve seen less and less of from the team as time has gone on. With Blizzard layoffs impacting the studio heavily and a lot of the team behind the actual storytelling getting axed, this isn’t a huge surprise.
And, with the single player offering for Overwatch 2 being canned due to poor sales on the initial set of missions that were developed, new lore has been sparse and mostly attached to new heroes.
However, according to Jason Schreier in his Reddit AMA discussing his novel, Play Nice, he revealed some of the things he learned about Blizzard from interviewing former and current employees. As it turns out, an Overwatch TV series was in the cards along with ones for Warcraft and Diablo.
“The book reveals that they had series in development with Netflix for Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo. But uh…” followed by a reference to a Variety article that described a Blizzard lawsuit against Netflix.
Blizzard was suing the streaming giant, claiming that they poached former Blizz CFO Spencer Neumann away from the company. As a result, any hope of getting these series made was snuffed out according to Schreier’s claims.
Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates on Esports, Gaming and more.
And, while Diablo and Warcraft getting snubbed is a shame for fans of both game series, both games have a constantly developing story in Diablo 4 and WoW, respectively. From the extremely well-animated cutscenes in D4 and its Vessel of Hatred expansion to WoW: The War Within bringing a significant development to the main story of WoW, fans of both series are eating good.
Meanwhile in Overwatch 2, the game’s most exciting developments are crumbs of lore with new heroes like Venture and Juno alongside brand crossovers like Porsche, Transformers, and My Hero Academia. Out of all the possible series that could have gotten a series, OW needed it the most.
“There’s no way…” replied Overwatch 2 content creator Flats.
“WE LOST SO UNBELIEVABLY HARD,” said another user. Others jumped in, claiming that they got excited to see mention of an Overwatch animated series before reading that it “was” in development rather than it actually being made.