Netflix and Sega are turning three very different corners of Sega's back catalogue into screen projects, and the headline grabber is a movie version of Crazy Taxi, the yellow-cab arcade racer that's been sending pixelated fares flying since 1999.

Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, the writing pair behind 2025's Naked Gun reboot, are scripting it. Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher of Original Film, the producers who've steered the Sonic movies, are on board alongside Sega's Toru Nakahara. No cast, no director, no release window yet. But the pedigree suggests Netflix wants this played for laughs rather than gritty realism, which tracks given the source material is basically a game about smashing through traffic for tips.

The deal isn't just Crazy Taxi, though. Netflix is also building a new animated Sonic series with Carlos Stevens and Nakahara, aimed at what the streamer calls an upper pre-school crowd. That's a step down in age from the Sonic Prime series, which ran three seasons on Netflix. Expect softer edges, per Sega's own pitch, something "cute yet cool."

Third in the trio is a much bigger tonal swing. Stranger Than Heaven comes from RGG Studio, the team behind the Like a Dragon and Yakuza games, which have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. The film adaptation follows a foreigner's rise in early twentieth-century Japan, from broke outsider to feared yakuza to entertainment mogul. Nakahara produces here too. The game itself lands in January 2027, so the movie is riding the same release cycle rather than adapting something already out.

Why Netflix keeps buying up game IP

Brandon Riegg, Netflix's VP of nonfiction and transmedia, framed the logic in a statement: games already come with characters people love and fandoms that show up, and the trick is just introducing them to new audiences. Sega's Shuji Utsumi, the company's president and COO, called it "just the start of what these titles can become."

That's not empty talk from either side. Sega and Netflix already have history through Sonic Prime, and Netflix's video game shelf has gotten crowded fast. There's the live-action Assassin's Creed series, a Gears of War film, animated takes on Minecraft, Magic: The Gathering and Clash of Clans, a competition show built around Overcooked, second seasons of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Splinter Cell: Deathwatch, and Devil May Cry wrapping up its third and final run.

What's missing so far is timeline detail on any of the three new Sega titles, casting for Crazy Taxi, or whether the Sonic show will connect to the existing 3D universe Netflix has already built. Sega's Crazy Taxi: World Tour, the next game in that franchise, ships in 2027, which gives some sense of when the studio wants the brand back in front of players. Whether the movie lines up with that or lands later is still an open question.