A Fortnite leaker reveals there’ll be a KPop Demon Hunters crossover soon, but what about a full video game tie-in?
Even if you’ve yet to watch KPop Demon Hunters on Netflix, you’ve likely heard all about it or heard a snippet of one of its songs, because this film is everywhere at the moment.
Coming almost out of nowhere back in June, the latest movie from Sony Pictures Animation has become Netflix’s most watched movie ever and its soundtrack has rocketed up streaming charts, with three of its songs holding the number one spot at different points in the UK.
It’s a phenomenon with no signs of slowing down, so chatter about a Fortnite collab is no surprise at all. But the bigger question is when will KPop Demon Hunters get a dedicated video game and how much involvement will Sony have with it?
Is KPop Demon Hunters coming to Fortnite?
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According to HYPEX, a reliable Fortnite leaker, a KPop Demon Hunters crossover is planned for the globally popular battle royale, although there’s no release date yet.
Epic Games is no doubt fast-tracking the collab and given what a no-brainer it is, and the fact that HYPEX and other Fortnite dataminers are almost always right, it seems the main characters will be coming to the game sooner rather than later.
What’s more, aside from adding character skins and other cosmetics to the battle royale, Epic can license the movie’s songs for its Fortnite Festival rhythm game mode. And since the main characters are a K-pop band, Epic can have them appear in one of Fortnite’s in-game virtual concerts.
Given how popular KPop Demon Hunters has been, any sort of Fortnite crossover not only stands to make a lot of money but also attract new players to the game’s ecosystem.
It can’t just end with a Fortnite collab, though. This is a prime merchandising opportunity, which is why a sequel has already been confirmed. It’s also claimed, via The Wrap, that Netflix is considering a full trilogy, a TV series, and a stage musical.
Will there be a KPop Demon Hunters video game?
It’s not unreasonable to assume there are at least discussions for a full KPop Demon Hunters video game. However, it’s too soon to tell what any such project will look like, when it’ll come out, or who will even make it.
Netflix did talk about developing its own video games for a while, but it seems to have given up on the idea and settle for licensing third party games for its service.
Despite Sony Pictures’ involvement, any such game isn’t guaranteed to be a PlayStation exclusive. Despite being animated by Sony’s in-house animation studio, Netflix holds distribution, music, and merchandising reports, according to Variety.
That means Sony would have to be buy the licence from Netflix, the same as any other publisher, and would not necessarily get preferential treatment.
We already know that films made at Sony Pictures Animation don’t get tie-in games exclusively for PlayStation. Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs and Hotel Transylvania, for example, received games that were handled by external studios and launched for other platforms besides PlayStation.
There are the PlayStation exclusive Spider-Man games, but Sony had to buy that licence the same as anyone else and Sony Pictures didn’t give them the rights to the Spider-Verse movies at all.
In fact, Marvel had approached both Sony and Microsoft about securing a partnership to make new games, but incredibly Microsoft turned them down. So we could’ve ended up in a world where a Spider-Man exclusive game launched on Xbox instead.
Maybe if Sony hadn’t sold the rights for KPoP Demon Hunters to Netflix it could’ve more easily secured an exclusive video game. However, it’s not even clear if Sony Pictures gets a cut of any revenue KPop Demon Hunters makes through merchandising.
The other problem is that it takes around five years to make a quality video game nowadays and many publishers will be wary as to whether the franchise has that kind of longevity.
Given the long development times, video games aren’t very good at being topical, which is why there’s so few licensed titles now, compared to the 90s and 2000s. Conversely, the fact that live service games like Fortnite can react much more quickly is another reason why they’re so popular.
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