Warner Bros. may have blocked Legendary from selling the distribution rights for Godzilla vs. Kong to Netflix for a reported $200 million, but that clearly hasn’t stopped the streaming service from getting in on the giant monster action. The production company’s TV division have struck a deal with the platform for a Skull Island animated show, which is being spearheaded by The Babysitter duology’s writer Brian Duffield.
The series will follow a group of characters who find themselves shipwrecked on the eponymous island, where they’ll presumably be forced to fight for their lives against a number of terrifying creatures, not to mention Kong himself. There’ve been rumors floating around recently that a MonsterVerse spinoff show was in development, but given that WB still hold the rights to the live-action films, Netflix’s project will more than likely exist independently of the big screen franchise.
If that wasn’t enough, the company have also announced an episodic Tomb Raider animation, which is another live-action brand controlled by Warner Bros. The last movie starring Alicia Vikander made almost $275 million at the box office back in 2018, and just the other day, Lovecraft Country showrunner Misha Green was hired to write and direct the sequel.
This continues Netflix’s recent trend of giving the green light to animated versions of blockbuster franchises owned by rival studios, with the streamer having already announced Sonic the Hedgehog, while we’re two-thirds of the way through the Transformers: War for Cybertron trilogy, both of which are live-action Paramount properties. Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie is also in the works, as the market leaders look to expand their 2D portfolio by relying on big names with global appeal.