Cyberpunk 2077 Movie Won't Adapt the Game, CDPR Says

Written by Adriano Ladislau in Movies

Published on October 18, 2026 14:15 UTC · Updated on October 18, 2026 21:45 UTC

CD Projekt RED's co-president says the Paramount movie will tell a brand-new story in Night City; 'Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2' premieres this Tuesday.

The Cyberpunk 2077 movie will not retell the game's story. In an interview with the Polish outlet PAP Biznes, CD Projekt RED co-president Michał Nowakowski said the feature film in development at Paramount Pictures will tell an original story within the universe of Night City — not a direct adaptation of the RPG released in 2020. The statement was published this week, eight days after Paramount confirmed the project, and reveals the strategy the company wants to repeat in cinema after the success of the anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

The decision avoids the classic pitfall of RPG adaptations: choosing a canonical ending among the game's dozens of possible paths. It is also the same move CD Projekt RED already made on television, with new characters and an independent story, and which is being tested again in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, arriving on Netflix on Tuesday (20) with ten episodes released all at once.

What CD Projekt RED said (and why it matters)

For Nowakowski, the film starts from the universe, not from the game's script. The statement was given to the Polish site PAP Biznes and reproduced by the specialized press:

"At this point, we can only say that we definitely don't want to make an adaptation of the game for the cinema. We want to tell a story in the world of Cyberpunk, but it won't be a one-to-one transposition of the game's story."

— Michał Nowakowski, co-president of CD Projekt RED, to PAP Biznes

The executive also explained why the company prefers parallel products instead of recycling the game's plot. In practice, CD Projekt RED wants to turn the film and the anime into a gateway to the game — not the other way around. The company itself had already signaled the ambition: on the day the feature was announced, Nowakowski posted on X that the studio was "excited about Paramount as a future partner, which shares our creative ambitions for the Cyberpunk franchise".

According to Reuters, confirmation of the film sent CD Projekt RED shares up 3% in the following trading session. The Polish studio has 184 developers dedicated to the game's sequel (with no release date), according to data from July 31, and sees cinema as a way to keep the franchise warm until then. Analysts interviewed by the agency assessed that the association with Hollywood should sustain players' interest in the interval between releases.

How the Paramount movie came about

The project was revealed by Deadline on October 8. According to the publication, Paramount Pictures is developing a live-action movie set in the universe of Cyberpunk 2077, produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura — producer of the Transformers series — alongside CD Projekt RED itself, owner of the franchise rights. Variety, Reuters and The Verge confirmed the information the same day.

So far there is no director, screenwriter, cast or release date publicly defined. Keanu Reeves, who plays the rocker-terrorist Johnny Silverhand in the game, has no confirmed involvement in the feature, and Paramount has not commented on the matter. The live-action format was confirmed by Deadline and also reported by The Hollywood Reporter and Reuters.

The feature is part of a Paramount offensive in the games market. The studio released Street Fighter in theaters on October 16 and has a Call of Duty movie in development, directed by Peter Berg with a script co-written with Taylor Sheridan. It is the same path taken by other recent adaptations that became franchises — a topic we have already covered in our own coverage, as in the case of the Call of Duty movie and the PS3 classic that will get a big-screen version.

Edgerunners is the model CDPR wants to repeat

The choice to "expand, not adapt" does not come by chance. When it released the anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners in 2022, CD Projekt RED bet on a protagonist who does not exist in the game — David Martinez — and on a fully original plot, animated by the Japanese studio Trigger. The series became a critical phenomenon and renewed interest in the game, helping sustain the title's sales for months. It was exactly this effect that Nowakowski cited when commenting on the second season:

"This kind of event has two effects: we activate the players who already exist and attract new audiences. We hope that this time we can also invite those who watch anime into our game."

— Michał Nowakowski, to PAP Biznes

Premiering this Tuesday, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 repeats the formula: ten episodes, a self-contained series, without requiring the viewer to know the game or the first season. Direction is by Kai Ikarashi, with character design by Kanno Ichigo and a story written by Bartosz Sztybor and Masahiko Otsuka — the same names behind the first season's script. Production is by CD Projekt RED with Trigger, and the release is exclusive to Netflix.

The new batch brings four protagonists, each from a different corner of the city:

• Weak (Clancy Brown) — an underworld legend who lost his implants and tries to find a purpose in the city that has left him behind;
• D (Nazeeh Tarsha) — a netrunner from the Snake Nation nomads seeking revenge;
• Roman Carax (Valeria Rodriguez) — a cinephile who documents everything that is wrong in Night City;
• Talia Yang (Kimoy Lee) — a former corporate tied to the Maelstrom gang.

The first episode was shown in July at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, to around 6,000 people at the Crypto Arena. CD Projekt RED confirmed the date along with a new trailer in August, and Netflix Tudum reinforced that the season is independent of the previous one. Cast details and the full synopsis are on the series' official page.

Why not adapting the game is the safest decision

Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG of choices. The player defines the origin of protagonist V — nomad, street kid or corporate — decides appearance, gender, romances and outcomes, and the campaign's ending varies according to those choices. Turning that into two hours of film would require electing an "official" version and going against much of the audience, who built their own path in the game.

There are also two practical obstacles. The first is V himself: a customizable protagonist must get a fixed face, voice and accent in the cinema. The second is Johnny Silverhand, whose image in the game is glued to Keanu Reeves' — which creates an actor dependency that a story set in another corner of Night City simply does not have.

On the other hand, there is plenty of material to spare. The universe did not begin in the video game: it comes from the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk, created by Mike Pondsmith in the 1980s, with corporations, mercenaries, ripperdocs and gangs that the game only partly explored. A new story can occupy neighborhoods, decades and characters the game never showed — exactly what the anime did.

The move follows a recent Hollywood trend, which has begun treating games as a universe rather than a script. That is how it went with The Last of Us on HBO, and with the Super Mario and Minecraft adaptations in theaters. In practice, audiences accept a brand-new story well; they easily reject a shortened and worse version of what they already played.

What is already known (and what is missing) about the movie

The feature is at an early stage: Deadline itself described the project as newly announced, with no expected arrival. This is the picture so far:

Some numbers help to understand the size of the franchise Paramount bought for the cinema:

• 40 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 sold through July 3, according to Reuters;
• 15 million copies of the Phantom Liberty expansion;
• 184 developers working on the game's sequel as of July 31, still with no release date;
• 10 episodes of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2, available on Netflix on October 20.

What to watch until the movie arrives

The performance of Edgerunners 2 is the most concrete test of the thesis defended by Nowakowski: if the new season repeats the first one's effect on sales and the game's player base, CD Projekt RED gains an argument to keep cinema away from literal adaptation. The Paramount movie still has no date or creative team announced — and should remain in that phase until the studio itself decides how to occupy Night City.

Meanwhile, the franchise keeps expanding along other paths: besides the anime and the feature, the company is preparing the game's sequel, with no release forecast. To follow everything involving the animated series, it is worth following the Series and TV category; for cinema news, coverage is in Movies.

Nowakowski's statement was published by PAP Biznes and echoed by Polygon and Gizmodo.

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