According to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier in the Reddit AMA below, Netflix were previously working on an animated series for Overwatch 2, but Activision Blizzard filed a lawsuit against the streaming giant for poaching CFO Spencer Neumann, who was in an employment contract with Activision at the time. The resulting court case put to rest any hope of the hero shooter, as well as Starcraft and Diablo, being represented in a dedicated series.
The Overwatch community has shown a lot of dismay towards this news. Overwatch’s launch in 2016 was a massive success on its own, but the lore and animated shorts made people dream of how good an animated series could be. In another universe where this lawsuit didn’t happen, there is likely an Overwatch show sitting side by side with Arcane as beloved adaptations for their communities.
Schreier was holding an AMA on the r/wow subreddit as he prepares to release his newest book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment. The investigative reporter has spent years delving into behind-the-scenes secrets that have been leaking out of the formerly beloved company.
Some of the other information that he brings to light that involves Overwatch includes that Jeff Kaplan pushed back on Kotick wanting to hire a new team to develop Overwatch 2 and the game’s original MOBA iteration, Project Titan, was such a colossal failure that Activision started to take more control over Blizzard.
Unfortunately, at this point it appears there will never be an Overwatch 2 animated series adaptation. The game is currently fully focused on its PvP roots and releasing new monetized skins. With various layoffs to the narrative team and this renewed focus to exclude PvE, the odds seem very slim that more will ever come of this.
