Sony Pictures And Story Kitchen Team On Feature Adaptation Of Video Game ‘The Drifter’
EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures and Story Kitchen have landed the live-action feature film rights to the videogame, The Drifter. Story Kitchen’s Dmitri M. Johnson and Michael Lawrence Goldberg will be producing with Timothy I. Stevenson and Elena Sandoval executive producing.
The Drifter is a pulpy adventure videogame, where after witnessing a brutal murder and being drowned by high-tech soldiers, a nomadic drifter awakens finding himself fighting for survival and unraveling a dark conspiracy involving shadowy corporations and a madman’s obsession. It is developed and published by Australian independent game studio, Powerhoof.
Following word that Story Kitchen and Sony had landed rights, sources say top writers and directors from around town are already reaching out to sell their pitch for the project. While studios across town are high on video game adaptations including Sony, who has Resident Evil bowing later this month, its rare to see this much attention on a game that was independently put together and not coming from one of the top tier companies.
The Drifter has garnered “Game of the Year” at the 2025 Australian Game Developer Awards along with winning “Excellence in Visual Art,” “Excellence in Narrative” and “Excellence in Sound Design.”
As for Story Kitchen, they’re no strangers to video game adaptations with a strong slate of upcoming projects coming up that includes Tomb Raider projects for Prime Video & Netflix, Life is Strange which is also at Prime a Just Cause movie at Universal and SEGA’s 90s classics’, Streets of Rage at Lionsgate among others.
Powerhoof is a two-person indie game studio located in Australia and founded by Dave Lloyd and Barney Cumming. Their first game was Crawl, the dungeon crawler where your friends control the monsters. Followed up by Regular Human Basketball, a multiplayer party-starter and The Drifter.
Story Kitchen is repped by WME and Pryor Cashman. Powerhoof is repped by Cam Rogers.
