Overwatch General Manager Says Animated Series Not Ruled Out

Since the earliest Overwatch cinematics first aired, fans have eagerly anticipated an animated series based on the hero shooter. Over the past ten years, rumors about a potential TV show have surfaced and faded, but there may still be a chance.

In a recent interview, Walter Kong, Overwatch’s general manager and head of live games and mobile development at Blizzard, addressed whether a TV adaptation of the game could still happen. “I would not rule it out,” Kong said.

“Every time we release assets, whether it’s a hero trailer or an event piece, there are comments like, ‘Hey, we would love an Overwatch animated series. Blizzard, what the hell? When’s that happening?’” Kong explained. “So we certainly hear that, and I think it’s not a huge stretch to believe there would be a lot of demand for that type of content. So certainly, no, I won’t rule out that sometime in the future there could be other storytelling experiences in the Overwatch universe.”

Blizzard has previously tried to develop animated shows based on its games, but those efforts did not succeed. In 2024, Jason Schreier, author of Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, reported that Netflix was set to adapt StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo. However, Blizzard filed a lawsuit against Netflix after the company hired the studio’s former Chief Financial Officer, Spencer Neumann, in early 2019. The dispute reportedly ended those planned adaptations.

With Overwatch celebrating its 10th anniversary, Blizzard announced that players have completed over 4.4 billion matches. Yet, fans still crave deeper storytelling. This year, the developer shifted its narrative approach, introducing year-long story arcs spread across multiple seasons. Kong admitted the studio has always aimed to make story a major part of the franchise but took on too much at launch in 2016.

“I think we got the sense that there was this desire to know more about the story of Overwatch, because we had quite a few of the cinematic pieces released before launch,” he said. “I think they helped establish that kind of emotional resonance prior to the game’s launch, but what we weren’t prepared for was being able to support so many ambitions. I think very early on we knew that we wanted the game to have an ongoing release cadence to it, and you don’t know how hard that’s going to be until you actually do it.”

“And then we also had the ambition to deliver some narrative, some story missions in the game as we showed in 2019 at BlizzCon,” Kong continued. “I think we really underestimated the level of resources necessary to hit with all of that ambition. By the time I stepped into the GM role in late 2021, it was clear to me that there was too much to work on, and I had to make some prioritization decisions. Back then we had been in a bit of a content drought, and I made a pretty clear call to prioritize getting back to the delivery of live game content in the PvP game. I think that is really the story of why we shifted to that Overwatch 2 model.”

“We did give it a try in terms of resuming development of the story missions and releasing the first chapter in Season 6 of 2023. We did get the signal back from players that it really wasn’t resonant, and I think that’s when we made the decision to focus our resources on the core PvP experience and really have stronger definition of what the game would be that we would serve the players that we had, and they were enjoying that specific experience.”

Beyond storytelling, Kong has broader ambitions for Overwatch, hoping to expand beyond its PvP roots. A recent example is the collaboration between Blizzard and Epic to bring Overwatch heroes into Fortnite, a project Kong personally initiated.

“I went to Epic, and part of my history is that I was at Epic from 2018 to 2020, and I worked on the Fortnite team at the time. I saw firsthand the positive excitement and energy that could come from surprising collaborations,” Kong said. “It was something that was positive for Fortnite as well as the partners, the collab partners, and I felt that the time was right to just bring a bit of excitement to the overall franchise and perhaps expose our heroes to some new audiences. Quickly we felt that our heroes would be presented in a very positive way, and as the work developed, that feeling got reinforced. Overall, we were very, very happy with how the collaboration delivered.”

Kong said the idea of expanding Overwatch’s characters beyond the hero shooter has been a long-term goal. “That has been the ambition pretty much from the beginning, but I felt that it could not be done until the core game experience of Overwatch was at a certain level of health and ability to serve our players was at the right place,” he added. “I didn’t think that pushing on these types of opportunities prematurely would be the right thing to do. I’m very happy with the leaders on our team and the energy and passion they bring to leading the game, which meant that I could spend more time looking to the future and working on initiatives that take a long time to fully realize. I would say that we are seeing some of that early work come to fruition, but there’s a lot more of it that I still want to complete, and nothing that I should really talk about right now.”

Could one of those future projects be the long-rumored animated series? For now, Kong is satisfied with the game’s direction after Overwatch dropped the “2” and refocused on what originally made it a hit. Blizzard hopes that momentum continues in the months and years ahead.