I'd watch anything Donald Glover makes. A PUBG show is testing that
Netflix announced the Atlanta brothers' next series this week, and it's an adaptation of a game with no story, no characters and no dialogue. There's a version of this that's an insult and a version that's a blank check.
The announcement came on October 29: a live-action PUBG series is in development at Netflix, with Donald Glover writing, directing, executive producing and starring, and Stephen Glover writing and executive producing alongside him. Krafton's entertainment arm LV3H is producing with Michael Schaefer and Gilga's Fam Udeorji, per Deadline. No plot, no other casting, no date — on the usual development clock, don't expect it before 2028.
I want to be clear about where I stand: the Glovers' names on a project have been a reliable buy signal for a decade. Atlanta ran four seasons without a single ordinary episode. Which is exactly why this announcement reads strange, because PUBG is the first property they've attached themselves to that nobody else wanted badly enough to guard.
The projects he actually wanted
Glover's history with franchises isn't a lack of interest. It's a list of confiscations:
- Deadpool, 2017–2018. FX ordered an animated Deadpool series written by Donald and Stephen. Marvel killed it before a frame aired, and FX chief John Landgraf put the blame on the record: "We would have done the show that Donald and Stephen wrote, but it wasn't our decision." Glover responded by publishing a whole spec script on Twitter.
- Lando, 2018–2024. Glover played Lando Calrissian in Solo, Lucasfilm announced a Disney+ series in 2020, the project became a film the brothers were writing in 2023 — and by August 2024 it was reported dead. Nothing has moved publicly since.
Two beloved characters, two finished or near-finished scripts, two corpses. And now the offer that did close: a battle royale where a hundred nameless people parachute onto an island and shrink toward a circle.
Marvel wouldn't make the Glovers' Deadpool. Lucasfilm wouldn't make their Lando. Krafton will make anything — it has nothing to protect.
The case for the blank check
That last point cuts both ways, and it's the reason I haven't filed this under disasters. PUBG launched in 2017, codified the battle royale genre that Fortnite and Warzone industrialized, and holds, by Krafton's count, seven Guinness World Records — all without a campaign, a protagonist or a line of canon. Krafton has been trying to turn that into film and TV since a 2021 animated project with Adi Shankar that was never heard from again.
An adaptation with no source story is usually a red flag; the logo really could be slapped on any military actioner, and a lesser team would do exactly that. But it also means there is no lore police, no studio custodian, no version of the Deadpool call where someone decides the script isn't what the character needs. For the first time in his franchise life, nobody can take this one away from Glover, because nobody is holding it.
Don't miss: 'What if Trump was actually competent': The Diplomat's scariest character just got a fifth season
So the test is clean, and Atlanta remains the best argument anyone's ever made for handing this particular writer an empty canvas. I'll watch it the week it drops, same as everything else with his name on it. What I'll be checking for, somewhere around episode two, is whose show it turned out to be — Krafton's logo delivery vehicle, or the first franchise Donald Glover got to keep.
Previously we wrote: 'Blast Processing all over again': Marvel's Infinity Vision badge on Avengers: Doomsday isn't fooling anyone