News News Official
Crazy Taxi is racing to Netflix, but turning SEGA's arcade chaos into a movie is the real challenge
Crazy Taxi is instantly recognizable as a game and strangely difficult to describe as a movie plot. Netflix and SEGA are going to find one anyway. The 1999 arcade favorite is becoming a live-action feature as the first project in a broader adaptation deal.
By Kader Crazy Taxi 
Netflix and SEGA announced their new multi-title partnership on September 14. Crazy Taxi will lead the slate as a live-action film written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, the writing duo behind the 2025 reboot of The Naked Gun.
Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher will produce through Original Film alongside SEGA producer Toru Nakahara. Moritz and Ascher already have extensive experience turning a SEGA property into mainstream entertainment through the Sonic film franchise.
Crazy Taxi has a great identity and barely any conventional plot
The original formula is wonderfully blunt. Pick up a passenger, beat the clock, ignore most reasonable interpretations of traffic law and reach the destination with enough reckless driving to earn a better tip.
SEGA clearly knows that this attitude is the thing that has to survive the transition. Nakahara says the Crazy Taxi adaptation should be hilariously crazy, while Moritz and Ascher have framed the movie around the memory of tearing through the Dreamcast game in a yellow cab with the music blasting.
There is no director, cast or announced story yet. Netflix has also given the project no release date.
SEGA is rebuilding Crazy Taxi on two fronts
The timing lines up with the franchise's larger revival. Crazy Taxi: World Tour is scheduled for 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Nintendo Switch 2.
World Tour preserves the frantic driving and passenger delivery structure while adding new cities, a story mode and online multiplayer. That makes the movie part of something broader than a nostalgic one-off adaptation: SEGA is actively trying to make Crazy Taxi current again.
This deal goes well beyond one yellow cab
Netflix and SEGA are also developing a new Sonic animated series aimed at younger viewers and a live-action adaptation of STRANGER THAN HEAVEN, the upcoming title from RGG Studio.
It is a curious trio. Sonic is already a proven screen franchise. STRANGER THAN HEAVEN is a new game that has not launched yet. Crazy Taxi sits in the middle as a recognizable legacy name whose core appeal has always been almost entirely mechanical.
That makes it the most obvious adaptation in the deal and perhaps the weirdest one to actually write.