I suppose one advantage of including a major Hollywood actor in your videogame is that when it comes to possible movie adaptations, you’ve already done some of then legwork when it comes to casting choices. For Cyberpunk 2077, it would seem that that’s very much the case, as the involvement of Keanu Reeves is making a potential cinematic outing appear a lot more likely.
In an interview with VGC, Mike Pondsmith, creator of the original Cyberpunk boardgames, said that while he “can’t really say” whether movie rights for the franchise are being discussed, “with Keanu Reeves being tied up in things, it’s become much more of a possibility.”
If a film ever were to happen, Pondsmith says that it would be very different to what we’ve seen in the tabletop games or what we can expect to see when Cyberpunk 2077 releases next year. “I can see that there are things that are easy to do in tabletop that I would never try to do in videogames, but there are things in videogames that have much higher impact than I’ll ever have in tabletop.”
“And that will change if we ever do a film for this thing. What I expect to see will be different.”
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It sounds as though that’s still a pretty big ‘if’, but as Pondsmith points out, with Reeves already on board, a potential film could seem like less of a gamble to Hollywood execs. Given that we still have several months to wait for Cyberpunk 2077 itself, however, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a movie, in the short term at least.
