Cyberpunk 2077 Is Getting a Live-Action Movie and Paramount Just Hired the Transformers Guy

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2026 — Night City is coming to the big screen. Deadline reported today that Paramount Pictures is developing a live-action film set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe, with Transformers producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura attached to produce alongside CD Projekt Red. No director. No cast. No release date. No plot. But after years of “is this actually happening,” Night City finally has a studio, a producer, and a green light that means business.

What’s actually confirmed

The confirmed list is shorter than the hype suggests — but the confirmations are the ones that matter. The film is a live-action feature set in the Cyberpunk 2077 universe: the same dystopian California megalopolis where corporations wield enormous power and cybernetic enhancements, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality are woven into everyday life. Lorenzo di Bonaventura — producer on the Transformers films, G.I. Joe, and The Meg — will produce alongside CD Projekt Red, which is taking a producer role on its own franchise. CD Projekt co-CEO Michał Nowakowski confirmed the partnership: “We’re excited about Paramount as a future partner who shares our creative ambitions for the Cyberpunk franchise. We look forward to sharing more details at the appropriate time.”

Everything else is a blank page. No director, no writer, no cast, no release date — and crucially, no word on whether the film adapts the game’s story or tells a new one set in the universe. That unknown is the single biggest question facing this movie. The game follows V, a mercenary who ends up with a biochip containing the digital engram of Johnny Silverhand — the legendary rockstar and terrorist played by Keanu Reeves — slowly overwriting their mind. It’s one of the best-written stories in AAA games. But movies that try to compress 80-hour RPGs into two hours have a body count, and a new Night City story — the way Cyberpunk: Edgerunners told one — might be the smarter play.

This didn’t come from nowhere

This is not the first time a Cyberpunk movie has been discussed. Back in 2023, CD Projekt announced it was developing a live-action project with Anonymous Content attached — a plan that sat in the background while the studio rebuilt trust after the game’s troubled 2020 launch and shipped the acclaimed Phantom Liberty expansion. Today’s news is that project moving forward in a real way: a major studio, a named producer, and the formal producing involvement of CD Projekt Red itself.

And the studio has receipts. The Cyberpunk franchise’s transmedia track record is genuinely good: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners — the Netflix anime from Studio Trigger — didn’t just draw huge viewership, it arguably did more to rehabilitate the game’s reputation than any patch ever could. Season 2 premieres on Netflix on October 20, just days from now. The Witcher, meanwhile, ran for years as one of Netflix’s flagship series. This is a studio that already knows how to let other people tell stories in its universe.

Why now: the numbers

The timing is not an accident. Per CD Projekt’s own figures: Cyberpunk 2077 has now sold 40 million copies worldwide — making it one of the best-selling games of all time — and the Phantom Liberty expansion has sold 15 million copies on its own. That’s an installed audience most studios would kill for. And Paramount is clearly on a video game buying spree: a Street Fighter movie with Legendary is headed for theaters this month, and a Call of Duty film is in development with Peter Berg directing and Taylor Sheridan co-writing. Night City is the next property in line — and honestly, it might be the most film-ready world of the bunch.

It’s also a busy week for games-to-screens. The same day this news broke, Xbox announced an entire new division — XP — dedicated to pushing its franchises into film, television, and theme parks. The industry has decided the transmedia era isn’t a side bet anymore. It’s the business.

The hard questions

The risk list is real. Video game adaptations have gotten dramatically better — The Last of Us on HBO, Fallout on Prime Video, A Minecraft Movie’s roughly billion-dollar run — but the failures prove there’s no auto-win. The last time a Paramount-adjacent studio handed a beloved sci-fi property to television, Halo got canceled after two seasons. And di Bonaventura’s filmography is blockbuster-heavy: Transformers, G.I. Joe. Night City needs neon and nihilism, not just explosions.

Then there’s the Keanu question. Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand is the face of the franchise — and Idris Elba’s Solomon Reed anchored Phantom Liberty. Even if the film tells a new story, the smart money says Reeves appears in some capacity. But building a film franchise on a cameo is not a plan; the movie has to stand on its own legs.

One more honest note: CD Projekt’s co-CEO recently said he doesn’t believe Cyberpunk 2077 fully redeemed itself after its troubled launch, and that he still hopes to win back players who lost faith. That’s an unusually candid admission — and it’s also why this movie matters more than a typical adaptation. A great film could do for Cyberpunk what Edgerunners did: become the version of the universe that people who never played the game fall in love with. The early-days framing is a feature, not a bug — it gives the project room to find a director with a real vision for this world instead of rushing to camera.

Want to revisit the game while you wait? Our Cyberpunk 2077 game page has you covered.