Donald Glover Drops Into 'PUBG': He's Starring in Netflix's Live-Action Battle Royale

Of all the games Netflix could hand to a star, it picked the one with no story.

Netflix is developing a live-action series based on "PUBG," the battle royale shooter from South Korean publisher Krafton, and Donald Glover is the whole package: he is attached to star in it, he plans to direct, and he and his brother Stephen Glover will write and executive produce it. Variety, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter all reported the deal on Thursday morning (Oct. 29), within minutes of each other.

That pairing is the story. Glover built his reputation on shows that are nothing but story — "Atlanta," the FX series he created and starred in, with Stephen writing and executive producing across its four-season run, is one of the most written-about shows of its era. "PUBG," by contrast, famously has no plot at all. As Variety puts it, the game simply drops large numbers of players onto one of several maps stocked with weapons and vehicles and lets them fight a last-man-standing deathmatch. The Hollywood Reporter puts the number on it: up to 100 players are deposited on an island, and they fight to be the last one standing. What Glover plans to do inside that frame is, for now, a secret — plot details for the show are under wraps in every report.

A game that never left

"PUBG" — originally titled "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," after developer Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene — was published by Krafton in 2017, and it effectively started the battle royale era that "Fortnite" and everyone else then ran with. Nearly a decade later it is still one of the most popular games in the world: Deadline reports it set seven Guinness World Records after its debut, and Variety notes it continues to pull in hundreds of thousands of active users every day. That staying power is exactly what Netflix is buying. This is not a nostalgia play on a dead franchise; it is a live one, with a daily audience most TV shows would kill for.

The show did not come together overnight. Deadline reports the project followed lengthy negotiations and stems from a first-look deal Netflix previously made with Krafton. The streamer then brought Glover to the project. Krafton has been trying to get "PUBG" onto screens for years: the company announced plans for a movie and TV series back in 2020, and an animated series from "Castlevania" executive producer Adi Shankar was announced in 2021 — with, Deadline notes, no updates on it since. Krafton's entertainment division, LV3H, is in on this version: Taeseok Jang and Sujin Lee executive produce for LV3H, alongside Michael Schaefer for Neon TV and Fam Udeorji for Gilga.

Glover's first Netflix series

This is also a homecoming of sorts — or at least a change of address. The PUBG series is Glover's first work for Netflix. He left FX in 2021 for a big exclusive overall deal at Amazon MGM Studios, a pact Deadline reports has since been renewed as a first-look deal, which is what allows him to work with other studios like this. He remains an executive producer on Amazon's "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" — which he co-created and starred in for its first season — and, per The Hollywood Reporter, is expected to reprise his role in its second season in a limited capacity. Before that, the Glover brothers teamed on Amazon's "Swarm" and the musical film "Guava Island," and Stephen also wrote for "Mr. & Mrs. Smith." Donald's screen résumé runs from "Community" and "30 Rock" to "The Martian," "Spider-Man: Homecoming" and "Solo: A Star Wars Story."

If the series goes forward, it lands in the middle of Netflix's full-court press on games. The streamer is already at work on a live-action "Assassin's Creed" series and a live-action "Gears of War" film, with animated series based on "Minecraft," "Clash of Clans" and "Magic: The Gathering" also in the works, and shows like "Splinter Cell: Deathwatch" and "Cyberpunk: Edgerunners" already airing. Games are the one library every streamer can see the audience for, because the audience shows up in the daily player counts. "PUBG" gives Netflix the genre's founding title — and gives it, in Glover, a creator audiences follow from project to project on trust.

The honest caveat — and why it still matters

One caution belongs in ink: this is a development deal, not a series order. Shows in development die quietly all the time, and "PUBG" itself has a six-year trail of announced screen projects that never arrived. Nobody should clear a night on the calendar for this yet.

But development deals are also how you read where the business is going, and this one says plenty. Netflix did not option "PUBG" cheaply or staff it quietly — it attached one of the most in-demand creators in television to star, write and direct, after lengthy negotiations, through a first-look deal with the publisher. A game with no story just hired the best storyteller available to invent one. Either that becomes the most interesting video game adaptation on the board, or it becomes the most interesting development story that never shipped. On Previously, we will be watching which one it turns into.

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