20th Century Studios’ Live-Action ’99 Nights in the Forest’ Just Landed a Horror Legend

Video game adaptations have become one of Hollywood’s most reliable pipelines for new franchises, but the industry’s latest source material comes from an unexpected corner: Roblox. That massive online platform has quietly produced some of the most-played games in the world, and studios are increasingly taking notice of just how large and devoted those built-in audiences already are.

20th Century Studios made its first major move into that space back in April, acquiring theatrical film rights to ’99 Nights in the Forest,’ a hit action-survival game developed by New Zealand-based studio Grandma’s Favourite Games. The deal marked the first time the Disney-owned division has tackled a feature adaptation of a video game, signaling genuine confidence in the project’s potential reach.

That confidence just got a significant boost. The studio has hired Josh Cooley, the Academy Award-nominated writer behind ‘Inside Out’ and director of ‘Transformers One,’ to pen the live-action script, and horror legend Sam Raimi has come aboard as a producer alongside his frequent collaborator Rob Tapert.

‘99 Nights in the Forest‘ tasks players with surviving 99 nights inside a haunted forest while attempting to rescue four lost children and fend off the vicious creatures lurking throughout the woods. Despite launching only in 2025, the game has exploded in popularity, becoming the seventh-most-played title of all time on Roblox, with nearly 26 billion lifetime visits and a 90.6% player rating according to figures from 20th Century Studios.

That kind of scale gives the film adaptation a genuinely massive built-in audience before a single frame has been shot. The game’s developers, Alec Kieft, Matthew Hufton, and Cameron Angland, are serving as executive producers on the film alongside Romel Adam, known for his work on ‘Evil Dead Rise,’ and Jose Cañas from ‘Play Dead.’

Raimi’s involvement feels especially fitting given his own deep roots in exactly this kind of horror storytelling. The director behind the original ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy has spent decades crafting stories about ordinary people trapped in terrifying, supernatural woodland settings, making him a natural creative fit for a project built entirely around surviving nights in a cursed forest.

Cooley, meanwhile, brings a different kind of pedigree to the project, having built his career primarily within animation before moving into live-action filmmaking. Sources say 20th Century met with several writers pitching their take on the material over the summer before ultimately choosing Cooley’s vision for the adaptation, though specific plot details about his approach haven’t been revealed publicly yet.

While 20th Century previously produced video game adaptations like ‘Hitman’ and ‘Assassin’s Creed’ during its time under Fox ownership, this marks its first foray into that space specifically under Disney, and its first time adapting a Roblox title altogether. Disney’s live-action and 20th Century Studios president David Greenbaum has previously described the deal as building on a foundation of millions of existing players worldwide, framing the project as an opportunity to expand that audience even further.

That framing reflects a broader industry shift, with major studios increasingly looking toward Roblox’s enormous player base as fertile ground for future franchises, following the same playbook that’s already proven successful with more traditional console and mobile game adaptations in recent years.

With Cooley now attached to write the screenplay and Raimi’s horror pedigree backing the project as a producer, ’99 Nights in the Forest’ has quickly assembled a genuinely promising creative team. No director or cast has been announced yet, and it remains unclear how far along the project is from actually entering production.

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