In this episode, host Kalie Moore talks with Dmitri M. Johnson and Michael Lawrence Goldberg, Co-founders of Story Kitchen, the studio behind major game-to-screen adaptations spanning Sonic the Hedgehog, Tomb Raider, Streets of Rage, and more. We explore how transmedia is evolving in a UGC-first world, where players don’t just consume IP, they shape it, and why Roblox worlds are starting to look less like “games” and more like living franchises.

The conversation dives into what actually makes a game adaptable (and when it shouldn’t be touched), how Story Kitchen stays aligned with developers and communities, and why they don’t chase heat even when a title is exploding. Dmitri and Mike also unpack Story Kitchen’s producer-first business model, the realities of timing and greenlight power in Hollywood, and what UGC creators should focus on if they ever want their worlds to travel beyond the platform.

We’d like to thank Overwolf for making this episode possible! Whether you're a gamer, creator, or game studio, Overwolf is the ultimate destination for integrating UGC in games! You can check out all Overwolf has to offer at https://www.overwolf.com/.

We’d also like to thank Lightspeed Venture Partners for making this episode possible! With its dedicated gaming & interactive media practice, the firm invests from an over $6.5 billion pool of early and growth-stage capital. If you’re interested in learning more, go to https://gaming.lsvp.com/.

This transcript is machine-generated, and we apologize for any errors.

Kalie: Welcome to the Naavik Gaming Podcast. I'm your host, Kalie Moore. Today's episode is about how games are no longer just being adapted into movies and TV, they're becoming the foundation of an entirely new trans media ecosystem, especially in a world shaped by user generated content.

For years, video game adaptations were retreated as a risky bet in Hollywood, but today, they're one of the most reliable engines for franchise building. But the rules are changing. We're moving beyond linear adaptations of closed single player games and into a future shaped by open worlds, creator communities and platforms like Roblox, where players don't consume IP, they actively build it.

My guests today are at the center of that shift. Since launching in 2022, Story Kitchen has become one of the most influential studios, adapting games for film and television with project spanning Tomb Raider, Just Cause, Streets of Rage and Sonic the Hedgehog. And in November, they announced something that signalled where the space is heading.

Next, a film adaptation of the Roblox Hit Grow a Garden, a UGC-driven game with more than 33 billion plays and peak over 22 million concurrent players, surpassing, even Fortnite's all time high. Story Kitchen was founded by Dmitri Johnson, the producer who helped unlock Sonic the Hedgehog long before game adaptations were mainstream, and Mike Goldberg, formerly one of Hollywood's leading agents from Video Game IP, who's worked from everyone from Sega to Square Enix to the John Wick franchise. Today, we're gonna talk about what transmedia looks like in a UGC-first world, how communities change storytelling, why Roblox worlds are starting to resemble living franchises, and what it means when the next generation of IP creators grows up creating inside games rather than just playing them.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dmitri and Mike of Story Kitchen to the podcast.

Mike: Thank you for having us.

Dmitri: Hello. Thank you.

Kalie: Thank you. Alright, to start us off, can you give us a quick intro up into your backgrounds and how Story Kitchen came to be? What gap were you seeing that you wanted to fill?

Mike: Absolutely. I will do it on behalf of Dmitri and I, and the team. So, we launched Story Kitchen three years ago. We specialize in sourcing and adapting non-traditional intellectual property for film and television. Ninety-six percent of that IP, that intellectual property, is video game IP, which is why the Neon Arcade cabinet logo, over our shoulder is our corporate gang side.

We launched the company and we built it primarily off of Dmitri's prior production company, which you just mentioned, DJ2 Entertainment. DJ2 Entertainment, had two important differences from Story Kitchen. Difference One, DJ2 Entertainment was a hundred percent focused on video game IP. Difference two, Hollywood didn't give a crap about game annotations and why that was happening, and it was very poor form, but thank God has since changed was really three major issues that we saw that Dimitri sought to get ahead of. Problem one was that the journalists until recently loved to write these stories about video game adaptation curses.

Both game journalists as well as Hollywood journalists would print these stories, which are very clickbaitable, but at the end of the day, they weren't true. The truth of matter is unfortunately, let's say 51% of movies and TV shows underperform, or at least don't meet or exceed expectations. And when you had a much smaller data set to pull from, what I mean is less games that are being adapted to big or small screen, you had a smaller data set and that gave an incorrect correlation and it put together a narrative that didn't really exist. So there was no game adaptation curse. It just was fun talking points until Dmitri Sonic. The second problem, which was a bigger problem, was that until recently, the women and men with green light power in Hollywood did not game.

They did not get high on their own supply. So that would be commiserate to Ted Sarandos on Netflix or Peter Kramer, the president of production at Universal Pictures being illiterate. Well, how are you a green light a script, a screenplay, or a book if you didn't know how to read? Same issue was happening until much more recently on the game side of Hollywood.

And then the last issue that was the most concerning that we had to get ahead of was that for a hundred years of Hollywood, that the role of a producer when it came to underlying rights, when it came to intellectual property, the producers had bad habits. And what they would do is what we would call smash and grab IP. So they would either option your intellectual property or do a shop agreement, but basically secure your rights for a finite amount of time and then run away from you. And maybe that's okay for life rights or for like an old book or for a short story. But you can't do that to the video game intellectual property.

You can't run away from the developer, from the publisher, from the both, from both parties is you're abandoning the community, you're abandoning the fandom, and it really was to the detriment every time this happened. It's like you had to with a lotto to not mess it up. So, what Dmitri sought to do with DJ2 and pull it all the way back to how to answer your question and what we have sought to do for Story Kitchen is the opposite.

We are inclusive. We are all about earning the trust, and as Dmitri likes to say, getting elected. We are all about fighting men and women in power that understand games, and below them in business affairs, and in legal and creative that are gamers or their family members or gamers, so that we can have a great experience and most importantly, being partnered and partners with our creators.

For purposes of this pod, obviously with our creators and UGC, but again, we look at our creators as literally part of the village when it comes to building this from soup to nuts. And that was a marquee difference. So, at Story Kitchen, that is what we focus on. We are considered best in class on adapting games for film and television.

We have an Amazon television first look deal that we just renewed to the end of 2028. We have a Dreamworks animated film first look deal that we've been servicing, and really we work with all of the buyers, all of the movie studios, the streamers, the television networks, the streamers, to tell stories at the highest level.

And we look to be that first friendly stop to help games move into LID air, which takes us to today, to podcasts and to moving within the UGC space is we believe that the next area of amazing storytelling has arrived and it is within the UGC platform.

Kalie: All right. And I can't wait to dive deeper into the UGC side of things.

But before we do, I wanna talk about the nostalgic game side of things too, because one of the things that I think is really interesting is that you've become known for bringing back Beloved IP from Sonic Street to Rage, to Raiders, to Raider. Why do the games that we loved decades ago keep finding new life?

Mike: So Dmitri, you wanna take that? No. So there, there's magic in it and what we're always looking for, and we can unpack this further in a second, is how to find a way to tell a story that tickles you, that gets you excited, that scratches, that itch, that you know it's always been there, but you didn't know what it was or how to get to it.

And to that end, a lot of these properties that you just mentioned have been magical and have evoked emotion at a certain point for enough people, that inclusive of us, that if we can find a unique and fun way to tell the story, or tell the story again, or tell that story again and differently, we, we wanna, we wanna scratch that itch.

And so, nostalgia's wildly powerful one done right and when not sold out.

Kalie: And then was, I wanna just dive a little bit deeper into that 'cause I always love hearing more of your personal backgrounds too. When you look back at the games that you loved as kids, like which ones would you think were cinematic before we were even using that word?

Dmitri: Well, I would, I would tie this answer into what Mike just said, and, and it's, it, it's funny, I was texting with a friend over the last couple of days who's, you know, in our industry and he's just like, how do you guys keep picking these things and like, keep winning and keep, and I was like, there's no science to it.

Like all, like every single thing we get behind, like it selfishly starts with us, like, you know, Mike grew up with siblings. I grew up as an only child. So, you know, when my friends had to go home or if I had to leave a friend's house, it was just me and like my imagination. So, like a lot of the things that, you know, we are working on now are things that take us back to a certain, you know, point in time in our own lives like Teddy Ruxpin. You know, we're doing that as a hybrid film right now. Well, when I was, you know, in my room, everyone gone it, it was me and Teddy in like, you know, those adventures. So, like, being able to look at that in the same way you look at like a sonic and it's like, okay, how do you take this and translate, you know, those feelings that we had, you know, in that moment in time to a new generation.

And that's kind of like our approach with, when we look at anything like, you know, a is it fine just the way it is? Like, like we, I don't know if it was ever publicly, but we would've loved to have, thrown our hat into the chase for the never ending story. Oh, yeah. But, but there's also a part of you that says, do you really need to touch that?

Like, that was a masterpiece. So, like, you know, you do have to like really ask yourself, you know, does it, does it need to be, does it need to be touched? Going back to your direct question, I know it is funny. Mike's heard this story a few times. My mom, for the first time, like a year or two ago, walks into my office, makes a joke about how it looks like my childhood bedroom, and then she asked me something that I had never been asked, which was, when did you decide that, you know, video games could work for movies and TV shows?

And I had to think about it. I'm like, I never, I've never been asked that. But then I actually knew the immediate answer, and it's gonna be the answer to your question. It was Streets of Rage. I remember playing Streets of Rage, streets of Rage 2 specifically, and just being like this, this is the greatest soundtrack of all time.

Like this action like, like this is a very true story. From the moment that I played Streets of Rage 2, it was my mission to make that a movie one day. And our friends at Sega will tell you, even before Sonic One was ever released, we were asking about Streets of Rage and mostly being told, go, go, go make that work first.

So, like I, I like to say that Sonic was like the test. To get to Streets of Rage, which was the one like, like if I never got anything made in this industry, had to get Streets of Rage made.

Kalie: And then what was the process like after Sonic was the success? Did they give you the green light immediately or was there in between time?

Dmitri: So, Mike, help me with, with timeline here, but I believe the next issue was not all rights that was needed, were, were immediately available, I feel like there had been like animation rates or something had been given out, so we had to like kind of wait for all the rights to come back to Sega and then just, you know, figuring out how do we translate this, you know, into like could start an action franchise.

And, you know, at that time Mike was my agent and I was very fortunate that I happened to have the agent who put together one of the biggest action franchises of all time in John Wick. So, you know, like I, I had a nice sounding board as we started trying to figure out how we could make Streets of Rage into the next action franchise.

Kalie: Oh, that's so cool. All right. I wanna shift a little bit into what actually makes games adaptable. Are there certain genres or design philosophies that consistently translate better when it comes to film or tv?

Dmitri: I mean, again, like it's, this, this sounds, I, I guess a little corny. but it typically starts with does it make you feel something. And this is where I would say it, it's not genre exclusive. It's not like it, does it make you feel something? Does it take you on a journey like I'm playing, I, I haven't told Mike yet, but I'm playing this indie game right now that it, it's, it's, it's so far emotional. It's like it's forcing you to live through your own life and analyzing how you were as a human and like I love that. Like I love that games can get into these deep philosophical like conversations and people, especially those you don't play games or like. That's a, that's a game.

So if you look at our slate and like, yes, there are the team Raiders and like, we love those things too. But like we have a lot of indie stuff on there. And part of that is like a lot of these indie storytellers will go there. Like they'll tell stories that you wouldn't normally look at as, you know, being something that would be a, you know, a quote unquote game.

So, we typically start there, then that, you know, then you look at the data and analyze the industry, you know, what are people looking for, what's working? You know, we, we meet with writers, directors, actors all day, every day. So, we kind of have an idea of like, who's looking for what, and then you just start putting your village together, you know?

And we were very upfront with everyone, like it is very difficult to get film and TV made. So, like anything that we do together, you know, do as, as a team at Story Kitchen, we have to love, we have to care. You have to go to bed and wake up thinking about this thing, because it could be a decade plus before you actually get to go make it.

So, long-winded way of saying we have to care has to make us feel something. Mike, please add on anything that I miss.

Mike: Well, I would add, not every game should be adapted, as Dmitri mentioned a few moments ago. Some are just perfect as they are and shouldn't be touched. And then not every game should be adapted right now.

Yeah, so it could be a game that makes wild sense to adapt, but the ideal version, let's say it's a live action TV show, and it should be anthological. And right now, this is not a great time for anthology Far Cry side like it took two FX heavyweights to do that, a showrunner and a huge actor that have had great FX success to do that.

But short of that, if that's, if, if a live action anthropological series is ideal, Hollywood is not making those, we would never recommend trying to do it and setting yourself up for failure. So, it depends on timing as well as the, the creative and the engine. And then there, there are times where there isn't a creative engine nearly as clean and as obvious as games like Tomb Raider.

Like Life is Strange that we have a series order at Amazon and we start shooting this summer, and those are the games where it's more of a sandbox and if one gets really excited, if we get really excited, we work to figure that out. And a great example. Well, let's, let's,

Dmitri: So, so jumping in there, this is gonna tie in our conversation later with UGC because a question we get all the time is, how do you adapt that? This, this all ties in.

Mike: Yeah, so a great example would be Vampire Survivors. When that launched, and they're very little creative. There's been more that's been giving to players and then hinted beyond. But when that launched, we loved the tone. We loved the sarcasm and snark, and we loved the game and the only way we could come up with was animated tv.

That this could be a comedic version of Sylvania, if you will, the Sylvania Netflix TV show. And we started to put together the Village to go that route. We partnered with the animation company out of Austin, Texas, Powerhouse Animation who did beautiful work for our Tomb Raider show on Netflix.

Tomb Raider, the legend, Lara Croft. They also designed our company logo. So, we have a great affinity for them regardless. But we started to work towards that direction. And then we got a call from our talent agency to view a new Lionsgate movie that was about to come out a movie called Boy Kills World.

And we saw this crazy movie in the William Endeavor screen room and lost our minds because it's buggers, it's zombie land, it's Deadpool like, it's so clever and it's genre. And we're like, wait a minute. That's how you could do Vampire Survivors as a movie, and we need that guy or girl, but it was a guy, and we got that filmmaker, and then we started to rebuild Vampire Survivors from an animated series to a live action movie.

So, when there's a sandbox that excites us, we will work and be flexible to figure out the version that makes the most sense for the game for Hollywood, and then most importantly, for the players, for the fans.

Kalie: It's amazing. I do, I wanna have like one kind of follow up question to that. Was there ever a project that you had to pass on for whatever reason, maybe a timing reason that you deeply regret?

Mike: Probably not for this for this record.

Kalie: Fair, fair. Well take that one offline.

Dmitri: I, I certainly had an answer. I know you did.

Mike: Oh, you know what? It's interesting, Dimitri. Are you gonna say what? Our, our, our, our friend, uh, that Five Nights. Yeah, that's the what? And it wasn't.

Dmitri: There was a, you'll, you'll say that. You'll say nice. You'll say nicer than me. Right? A DJ2 colleague.

Mike: When Five Nights first hit, not the movie, like the game shipped, Dmitri lost his mind. A very well-educated, like three decade deep in the game space colleague, deterred Dmitri's determination. They respectfully passed on engaging and obviously Five Nights is incredible.

Both movies had done extraordinary and, it's, it's like it's my Paranormal Activity. Like I brought in Paranormal Activity when I was a junior executive. And my boss, Natalie, passed on it. She hated it and told me to stop doing, turning in projects for weekend read for a month. Weekend read is every week you read or watch something and then you bring it to the company that Monday morning to talk about it.

If it's a, a great sample or B, it's available. It's something you should go after. And I was at Joel Silver's company, Silver Pictures Dark Castle, and I got it slipped to me by Scream Fest. It was, it was just a DVD that was made. San Diego for $14,000 and the CEO Fatter Scream Fest, Rachel Bofski, gave it to me and was like, you have to watch this.

And I watched it. I lost my mind, put on weekend read and uh, it was now well received. Activity is like his Five Nights where it's like, man, they should have listened. That would've been fantastic.

Dmitri: I'll say the, the folks who did end up making a Paranormal,they, they gave me a copy of the original VHS Mike on my side and it was better. It was better than what actually hit.

Mike: How about this, the same producer got both our projects, Jason Blum. Oh my God, that is true. He got Paranormal and he got Five Nights. We both saw it first.

Dmitri: Here's what I would say. Five Nights was definitely the moment where I stopped listening to other people and if, if that, and so I am, I'm I, I, I tend to see moving pictures with music and it was the music in Five Nights that really got my attention. Like the little, the, the, the theme song like that, that hooked first and then it was like, oh yeah, totally see this. And yeah, was, was talked out of it. That would be the last time. Here's what I will say, one of our best friends in the business, Russell Binder, is behind it.

And if not us, you can not have a better human. You know, rooting for your brand, so, so at least it's in good hands.

Kalie: Oh, both have done very well. Thank you guys for sharing that with me. I think it's really important that those moments in your career when you stop listening to other people. So yeah, thank you for sharing.

I'm gonna totally switch gears now. You know, this is in the Naavik Gaming Podcast. A lot of the people listening are in the gaming world, maybe know a little bit about the entertainment world, but are definitely not as entrenched as you guys. And I wanna ground this in reality for a second. So, for the people who are listening who might not understand this side of the industry, can you just tell us like, what's your business model? How does Story Kitchen make money?

Mike: Other than getting paid for this podcast?

Kalie: Of course.

Dmitri: Just kidding. We so, so, so we actually love this question 'cause this question is one of our advantages. Which is we make money by never charging our partners, and we want to emphasize that Mike, I know you, you highlighted, yes.

Mike: That is true. One, there's many ways to make money. They're not all like fair and rational and correct. But the, to, to iterate on what Dmitri said a second ago, there have been men and women in Hollywood who run around and they ask you to pay them. And whether they ask you to pay them a fee, which is wild, or even worse, some type of monthly consulting fee to help you.

Unpack and figure out Hollywood. Also not okay, that's not how it's supposed to work, how it's supposed to work. And we do it in a very hands above board altruist away. Because again, we wanna earn your trust and keep it as Hollywood. Light Games is a very reputation-based industry. It's a very small industry.

It feels massive and at times the reach is global. But it's, it, it is a community, it's a village is we only make money, generate revenue for Story Kitchen when we are producing something. So, when we are actually in production, in film or television, we get paid per movie. Produced or per episode of TV show produced.

Which means if we are unsuccessful at adapting your game, we have failed and we're not getting paid, or we've done a bad job, we're not gonna get a chance to make a second movie, a sequel, a prequel, remake. We're not gonna get a chance of a second or third season of television. So, we are incentivized to successfully adapt your project and to do a great enough job that we get to make more of them, like more Sonics, more Tomb Raiders. So, for us. It's, it's when we actually get to be boots on the ground producing. So, what that means is all of the work between start of our conversation with you and producing is speculative.

We could spend a hundred or a thousand men hours and not actually get the green light and get to move into production. And that's it. Like we have unfortunately part as friends and we got the opportunity to try and get it adapted, but that is the clean way it's supposed to operate.

Kalie: In what percentage? Just roughly ballpark. What percentage of those, let's say more than initial conversations where you're actively working on something, what percentage of those turn into like films or TV shows that you actually get to produce?

Mike: It is hard to say because we're still a young company, and also the entertainment industry and linear is constantly evolving.

So, our batting average, like we can give a much better assessment when we're at the 10 year mark of how it looked.

Dmitri: I would, I would take that a different way. It, it's hard to say because we, we don't quit. So, one of the best and current examples is Life is Strange. Like, we were very fortunate to, partner on that, you know, before the, the first game came out and, you know, Mike and I together, I think have, you know, what sold it three times and, you know, like it was just, it was one of those that was too special to just let fade away in like development hell or just like, ah, couldn't get it done.

And we just kept going back, going back, going back. And you know, being a believer that the universe does stuff when it's supposed to, when the timing is right, we could not have a more incredible team than we do right now. It's, you know, as someone who has lived with this IP for so long, like the, the approach, the adaptation feels fresh and new even to us and exciting.

And you know, it's one of those that'll be worth, you know, the 10-year, you know, struggle to get this to the screen. So, like, it's hard to say like batting average, 'cause like, it's very rare that we walk away from something and be like, couldn't get it done.

Mike: Yeah. Like,

Dmitri: And it goes back to, to the earlier point, we only get behind these things because we care and if we care, we pretty much have to have someone break up with us to move on from it, because if we care, we're gonna keep right. And, and you know, the running joke is a lot of these things, you know, the first movie or the first season, we, we, we make a, I mean, it's a depressing joke, but that we probably lost money on those first projects if you factor in all the years of not being paid to try to get these things to screen. So, so yeah, you have to care.

Mike: I like that. And, and you know what that that's right. And, and I'm gonna go off that. It's all the appetite. Like if there's the willingness to continue pushing it forward. So for example, Sleeping Dogs from Snicks, that hasn't been out a new game in so many years and there's been a lot of press over the last few days over this winter break about Si Lou having, still starring, which is true that a director off nobody two is coming on to direct Timo. Confirm or deny, that sounds pretty accurate to me. And that has been, and then they talk about if you.

Dmitri: If he, if he, if you go to his Instagram, I think he did confirm

Mike: And then they talk about the history of Sleeping Dogs with Donna Yen. That was true. That was the, the part that was missing the last few days of those articles was Dimitri and DJ2, as part of it.

Like we have been in it with Square Enix on unpacking that amazing game franchise into a movie for many years now, and we've never been closer and we've been given the runway to do this by Square. And that's how we need like Dmitri's point, passion and we need the runway. And eventually these things coalesce.

And funny enough, when I was an agent, I actually sold the Nobody franchise. So, to see the Nobody 2 filmmaker. Move to Sleeping Dogs, I'm like, there we go. And the nobody, two writer we have announced is on our screens just cause adaptation at Universal Aaron Rubin. And it's just, it's runway, passion, and runway.

And honestly, the odds and the percentages get better every year because of that.

Kalie: And I'm sure the timing component that you also talked about earlier too comes into effect. You know, 10 years from now you'll be able to have projects that wouldn't have been green lit even two years ago. That depending on, on trends and what's hot in Hollywood will likely be green lit in the future.

Mike: And now we have more men and women in green light power. So, for example, you know, depending on the day and the press cycle, David Ellison did. David Ellison is a massive gamer. He personally called us earlier this year as he was part of the split fiction bidding war. When we were out with that feature film adaptation package with Haylight, with John Q directing and Sidney Sw co-starring and Rhett Reese and Paul Warnick adapting and it was tough.

Like David is a passionate gamer and it's awesome to know that a passionate gamer is now in charge of Paramount possibly. In charge of Warner Brothers has Skydance Paramount and is one of the leaders of the industry as he's a Spotify gamer.

Kalie: That's amazing. I didn't know that. Big game. It's gonna be really, lemme see. Yeah. Do you know what, what his favorite game is by any chance?

Dmitri: I think he, I think he, I think he just got the rice for that.

Mike: Pretty big in cold Newie. Pretty big in a cod, but not just, I mean, he, I, I believe he is a PlayStation five first player, but he's a big gamer.

Kalie: Very cool. Okay guys, I'm going to shift gears into my favorite topic, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to add you on the podcast, which is UGC is the new frontier of transmedia.

So, I wanna just zoom out for a second. Last year on this podcast, the Naavik podcast, they did a transmedia focused episode, and Shahar Sarek, who's the CMO, from over laid out a really, I think a really compelling framework that stuck with me. He said game one was single player. Game two was multiplayer.

Game three is UGC first. Platforms like the Roblox, the Minecraft, the Overwolf, the Fortnite of the world. And it really changes not just how gamers game, but how gamers create. And so, I wanna talk to you guys about when gamers are creating, how does that shift change what IP even means?

Dmitri: I, I have such big thoughts around the, these types of questions. For me, I, I, I grew up at a certain era, the big camcorder era, then the smaller camcorder era where I was constantly creating content. The difference is we, and I speak for the royal, we, Michael and myself, you know, we were of the dial up a OL era where the idea of putting an entire short film or any kind of real content online was not a possibility.

So, to see, and, and I, and I liken UGC to what was the beginning of YouTube, where you have these people who have stories and, and things they need to get out into the world who may not have access to Hollywood per se. But because you have these tools that allow you to go from human to human, you can get your stories out there.

And I feel like in the same way, YouTube was largely ignored until it became a monster. And now everyone's trying to get on that train. UDC feels like that is where this next generation of storytellers is, is kind of coming from, and it, it's very easy to just go and dismiss as like these silly, you know, uh, lo-fi games.

And sure, a lot of Hollywood will do that until again, it's too late and it's a monster that they can't get, you know, to be part of. For us, we look at all IP and it could be from a one two person team out of Australia, like Mike said, you know, we had our final Zoom of the year with a team who came on a Saturday from Vietnam, who are just, you know, telling stories with the tools available to them.

We don't care if it's a mobile, a, a, a sketch. Like great storytelling is great storytelling. And you know, you have to look where audiences are responding. And Mike, he lives with a great test cycle for us, which are his two twin boys who think he is a Lord right now because of the UGC activities we are currently involved in, and, and you can't, I mean, you can't ignore it, but it would be foolish and it would be in the same way studio execs ignored us back in the 2010s, you know, when we were saying traditional, you know, box, you know, games that you go to Best Buy to get, you know, could work as movie and tv. That's UDC right now. Like there is storytelling happening there, there are creators who are speaking to an entire generation that may be a little younger than us, but you cannot ignore that.

So, we we try to keep our ears open. We try to see consume, you know, like if we're not on our steam deck, Mike's, you know, playing Roblox, you know, I'm on my PS five. Like, we try to take it and consume everything and just find those stories that, that connect with us first and pull us in first. It then feels like something that we need to help get out to a larger audience.

Kalie: And that's a perfect segue into our conversation about Roblox, specifically Grow a Garden. So, as I mentioned earlier in the intro in November, you announced that you're producing the Grow a Garden movie in Roblox, and I have a couple questions related to that. So first of all, what, what made the moment feel right is gonna be question number one, but as a follow-up, like obviously incredible numbers, right? But as everyone knows for movies, it takes quite a lot of time. So, I'm not even sure when this movie will come out, maybe two years. Does that sound accurate or is there any?

Dmitri: Had a major attachment just before break that might speed that up a little. Okay. Major, major attachment, a plus.

Kalie: Great. Well, fingers crossed, but let's say even if it's a year from now, are you concerned that Grow a Garden won't be as popular as it is right now. Do you, are you concerned about staying power with UGC titles is my question.

Dmitri: No, and it, and it's funny 'cause even the people from that world who live that world every day, they, they're very honest about that same question. It's, it's why we often say we don't chase heat.

Like we don't chase something 'cause of sales numbers. We don't chase something because of how many people are playing it, 'cause that's a fool's mission. If that, if the strength of why you're trying to do something, adapt something is because it's sold a lot, you're, you're in a fool's errand. So, this is Grow a Garden is an interesting story. So, we have really good friends of the Story Kitchen Family, both named John over in Moon Rock, who had been flagging Grow a Garden for us pretty much top of the year. And we, we kind of respectfully was like, eh, we're probably not the best ones for that. Eh, don't get it. And then we, we finally took some time with it and said, okay, we get it now.

Like you, you get like, we think, so we think we have a way in, like let's just talk to the team over there and we'll share our thoughts. And if they like it, they like it and if they don't, we totally respect that. And what we found was a story that we think works regardless of if it's, you know, the most concurrent played game tomorrow or not.

And for us, that's that key, the key part, like, it, it, the story has to stand on its own. The, the reason for it being adapted has to stand on its own and.

Kalie: Yeah.

Dmitri: If the, the fans are still there, then fantastic.

Kalie: Yeah. But I kind of wanna dive deeper in that because obviously it's not a traditional narrative game with defined characters or like generations of fans.

Like why does something like that still make sense to adapt?

Dmitri: We tried to, so specifically in Grow a Garden, we tried to work backwards. Like we were trying to look at what was it in the DNA, that IP that, that made people want to go back to it and play it. And like, sure, some of it's like you'll get like just casual gamers. You wanna just jump in, jump out. But there's like this sense of community, okay, how do we, how do we translate that? The actual, like act of like you're growing a garden. Okay, how do we take that and make this make sense for a film? You know, we, we, we really broke down in our opinion what we think are the, are the pillars that are like people are responding to. And it's like, and then how do we do this in a way where we bring this to a screen and now it works for my mom, now it works for my grandmother. Like, like that's, that's our process. Like, how do Mike's 10-year-old boys still love this when they go to see Dad's movie and, and not have them say, this isn't what we love about the game, dad.

Like, you suck. Like we, we, we have to look at all those things and then do it in a way that that honors, honors the original audience. You know, we obviously wanna honor, you know, what the creators went into it for. But it still has to work. It still has to work as a film, it has to work as a series if you go that way.

I don't, I don't know, Mike, if you wanna add to that.

Mike: Yeah. First off, going back a couple seconds, Sonic was not on fire video, a video game franchise. When that first movie came out in February 2020, that it, but at the game, the box office in Critical Success. And since then, Sonic is I think a $13 billion brand, but it was not when we got started, when Dmitri got started.

Also, when I was an agent. I sold Violin Night, which is now two movies. Nobody, which is two movies, John Wick, which is a lot of movies. Those had no preexisting awareness because they were original ideas, but they were well executed, original ideas. So going back to Dmitri's point about this, whether the numbers are extraordinary or non-existent, if we're fired up about the area, about the idea, about the world, about the tone.

If it feels magical to us and we think we could translate that to others, that is our North Star. And then for Grow a Garden specifically, the game is magical. And the idea like in a dark, divisive moment, both in the US as well as global, like that is not this, this is bright. This is fun. This is vibrant.

This is, having a green thumb. I mean, I've grown and unfortunately, accidentally killed so many fruits and vegetables and flowers with my kids. Like there's something universal about the idea of growing things, of growing a garden, and then what the game franchise has done so well is letting players tell their own stories.

And for us, that's a sandbox built. So, to Dmitri's point on a moment ago about those pillars of what we look for, the DNA, there are so many things that are magical about Grow a Garden, literally and figuratively. For us, it's not to replace playing the game, but it's to enhance those that are fans and bring in people who don't yet know about it or haven't played it to understand there's something great we can do as a two-hour movie.

And if you like the movie, maybe you take a, take a crack at the game too.

Dmitri: And just, and, and going back to what Mike said, you know, about, about these things. So, like using Sonic, like, you know, my mom sitting next to me at the premier, like other than passing me, seeing me play the game, she's not a Sonic expert.

But when you have that scene where he's sitting in the counter and you see the holes in his shoes and you realize this is ultimately an orphan who just wants a family, wants a community, wants to belong. Like I don't care if you ever play a game, like those are real grounded feelings that are gonna smack you.

And that's what we try to do with any of these things. It's like, what are those real human emotions that we can bring to, you know, our projects that is relatable no matter what.

Kalie: I wanna go back to one thing you just said, Mike, about, you know, for the people who maybe have never played the game, watched the movie, maybe it will make them wanna wanna play the game.

It's like really the transmedia ecosystem, right? And it feels like we're moving more into that than just one off adaptations. Like do you see it that way? Like how do you see the ecosystem as a whole changing?

Mike: So, we try to be very organic about it 'cause what we're not trying to do is be a commercial.

We're not licensing executives, we're not business development like we are storytellers and we are storytellers, narratively and linear. So, for us, our primary objective is finding a way to tell a story that could stand on its own. Like is it, can we make it a great movie? Can we make it a great season of television?

Beyond that, if we've done our jobs right, hopefully you'll want to come back and rewatch the movie or rewatch the TV show, see more movies and more TV shows and this is that exciting moment of transmedia. If you love it and you wanna be a part of it, you wanna continue to participate whether that's and how people show and share their participation.

Like my kids like wearing the t-shirts, wearing the ball caps, playing the games, really finding it where it is, whether it's native or it grows into that space. Pun not intended, but it kind of works here. So, for us it is in Grow a Garden specifically, we wanna make a great movie, and if we make a great movie, it will, most likely, it should bring in people across the Grow a Garden ecosystem, which means everybody wins because holistically, if we are doing this correctly, it's supposed to fire in all cylinders, but for us, we don't own Grow a Garden. We are not backend participants in Grow a Garden. We are movie makers here. So, we are here to make a great movie and to ensure that the men and women that are involved in the Grow a Garden franchise on the gain side are happy, are supportive, and are enjoying this so that we can all win together.

Kalie: So, you know, we've talked obviously about Grow a Garden, Sonic or IP that it's existed and then is made into a movie. But I'm wondering if you're seeing, new games that are coming out that wanna partner for TV shows or for movies timed more at launch. Is that a trend that you're seeing? Is that even a possible to, to plan out timeline wise?

Dmitri: We just announced one a few weeks ago in King Makers. You know, that's, that's a game that we were very fortunate to get to play a build of last year. And like, look, everything that Hollywood School teaches you is runaway. It's period, it's expensive. Like everything about that game should have been a, a hard pass just because the rules tell you like you're gonna get to pass games on out hasn't sold a single copy. But we couldn't, we couldn't stop going back to it, like this idea. And one of the things that the devs did is like they really spent time grounding what could just easily be a batch of crazy idea in, in real history and that that hooked us.

And, and you know, we were very fortunate to have a partner in Netflix who preempted the town, came in, could not be more excited about a game that's not even out yet.

Kalie: Amazing. How does collaborating with major studios, game publishing studios, differ from working with UGC creators or indie developers?

Mike: Kinda examples would be what screen aches. Bandai Namco, Sega, for example. Yes. For example, it's a different process. Working with UGC creators is typically more streamlined. It, it's similar to working with an indie game developer with an indie or, or even the smaller as where there's less red tape and corporate to understand and get through.

They all come with their unique challenges, but I will say, at least for efficacy to get to the people that can approve, that can say yes, that could be a signatory. It's cleaner and you can move faster in that regard. So, Tomb Raider, which we are doing twice over. We have animated two meter. We're our season two premier on Netflix earlier this year.

This month rather we have live action two meter at Amazon that starts shooting next month. That was an interesting process where the first deal, adaptation deal was done under Square Enix, and the second adaptation deal was done under Embracer Group because in the middle Square Enix sold the game studio Crystal Dynamics to Embracer Group.

Always took like a year each time to like work through the process and the deal making and the long form agreements, but we got there both times. That is it. It's really time. It, it will take longer, to have the right people sign off at the right time with the right needs met. But we're flexible.

We're, if we're given enough time to do something and we could keep our passion, at that high level, we always want it to be. It just, it stretches out the time horizon, but we're still gonna get it done.

Kalie: Got it. And then, so a lot of people listening to this, especially the UGC creators, might be thinking, I'd love to take my IP across mediums someday.

For someone who's building inside Roblox or on Curse Forge, or in UAFN, what advice would you give them? If they're already thinking about IP expansion.

Dmitri: I would tell them don't. And by that, I mean, so there's a, Mike Mike's heard me going about this. There's a game out of Australia that started with just seeing great. So full disclosure, Mike and I, we, we are filters for the BAFTA game awards and one of the perks is you get everything, you get every game that exists on the planet for that year. And just this cover art got my attention. I'm like, take this where spin very like eight spitty kind of look, nothing that screams like massive Hollywood 10 pole movie.

And the story pulled me in, the music pulled me in. We didn't know them, we didn't know anything about them. Two-person team tracked them down. And the conversation we had, and this is a long way to get to your, to your question, they, they couldn't believe that Hollywood producers thought that their game could be a movie or TV show.

And I find that majority of the time, that's the reaction we get when we track someone down. Going back to your, I think two questions ago about going after a game before it's released, we, right before the holiday secured the rights to a game that I think comes out two years from now. Again, another new great indie studio out of Germany, who were kind enough to give us a full build of the game. Story blew us away.

Same response like, oh my gosh, like you think this, like, like we just came out of film school and, and like, so I find when people aren't thinking about like, oh, I'm gonna do a movie and a comic and a this and a that, it almost organically works better as opposed to, because like Mike said, like even from our side, we can't go into like, oh, we're gonna do a two made animated in a movie and a TV show.

And, and, and Sonic, we're gonna do like spinoffs. Like you just can't do that. Like, you have to focus on making that first thing great and then hopefully it's success. And if again, the stories warranted, there's more to say, more to do you in that world, like, you know, then, then let's do that.

Mike: Cream rises to the top.

So, you make you build an amazing game and you keep updating it and you make it enjoyable for the players. Us linear men and women will hear about it, find out and come find you. But if you're building it just to be adapted, ugh.

Dmitri: Like, I mean, look at, I don't, I mean, Mike can tell you about that experience of getting Wick to the screen. Like, I assure you that team was not thinking about spinoff movies and spinoff TV shows. Like, you know, it was how do we go make this first movie?

Kalie: Okay. And I have one final question for you guys. I don't know if you both wanna answer it though, without picking a current favorite child. I wanna hear about a game you loved growing up that shaped how you think about storytelling today.

Dmitri: So many, so many, so many. I, I'll tell you one that, and this is so weird and random, but one that always comes back to me probably 'cause it was such an early part of my game playing and it was one of the earlier games with the story. Carmen Sandiego. Like I remember playing Carmen Sandiego and like, you talk about one that I guess kind of got away. Carmen Sandiego was always one that as like a four or five-year-old playing an apple computer, just, I always thought there was an incredible story to be done there. And I, I guess that was probably like the first time you saw like the possibilities and then, you know, obviously when Sega came along and just started pushing, you know, everything forward with their incredible soundtrack, Chin Nobi, Altered Beast.

Like, just like you, you saw the future of storytelling and games.

Mike: I would say for me it's funny 'cause now this is gonna, this dates us both 'cause we're of an era of the NES and Nintendo Entertainment System. The first, and the first Sega Atari is for the, the men and women that were slightly older than us, but we're like the first set of major consoles, Oregon Trail.

Like playing that game, and that wasn't on Nintendo or Sega. I played it on my Apple two G. My dad's Apple two GS computer. But playing that was the Carmen Sandiego era. Yeah. Yeah. That's where I played it all being like immersed in it. Like, no, I don't wanna lose my oxen. Like, no, I don't wanna get bit by a rattlesnake.

But like you followed along and it was more dynamic than Minesweeper or when this was on Nintendo, on Tetris, all had fun gameplay game loop mechanics. From a storytelling perspective, that's narrative inside of the gameplay. And obviously it only got better since then. But the Oregon Trail is a fantastic game.

Carmen Sandiego is a fantastic game. So, games that have stories, but you're still playing a game. You're still it. It's active versus passive, and we always have to plan for that. As movie and TV makers where we know we're gonna be providing a passive experience. So, it has to be that much more delightful, that much more entertaining because we're now asking you to lean back and that's after you've leaned forward to play the game.

So that takes a different type of thinking and, and, and creativity to unpack, to make it feel rewarding as we also want you to enjoy a different story than you may have already played. But yeah, same era as Dmitri.

Kalie: I love that you can tell pretty much everyone's age within, I would say three years, just based on the games they play.

Also, Carmen Sandiego, and big Oregon Trail fan. Dmitri, Mike, thank you so much for joining us on the Naavik podcast. I really appreciate it. All right. Thanks everyone and have a happy new year.

Dmitri: Thank you.

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