Sony Pictures and production company Story Kitchen have secured live-action feature film rights to The Drifter, a video game from Australian independent studio Powerhoof. The deal is notable because it brings major studio attention to a title made outside the big-budget game publishers, at a time when Hollywood is already heavily invested in video game adaptations, with Sony's Resident Evil film due out this month.

The Drifter follows a nomadic protagonist who witnesses a murder, is drowned by high-tech soldiers, and awakens to fight for survival while uncovering a conspiracy involving corporations and a deranged mastermind. Story Kitchen's Dmitri M. Johnson and Michael Lawrence Goldberg will produce, with Timothy I. Stevenson and Elena Sandoval as executive producers, and sources say writers and directors are already pitching for the project. The game swept the 2025 Australian Game Developer Awards, winning Game of the Year plus honours for visual art, narrative and sound design, and joins Story Kitchen's extensive game-adaptation slate that includes Tomb Raider, Life is Strange, Just Cause and Streets of Rage.