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Crazy Taxi is becoming a live-action movie as Netflix and Sega dig much deeper into the game catalog
Sega's screen ambitions are no longer limited to keeping Sonic busy. Netflix and Sega have announced a broader adaptation partnership, beginning with a live-action Crazy Taxi comedy and expanding into projects based on Sonic and RGG Studio's still-unreleased Stranger Than Heaven.
By Kader 
Of all the Sega games that could have become the opening move in a new Netflix partnership, Crazy Taxi is a wonderfully strange choice.
The arcade series is being developed as a live-action comedy feature written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, the writers behind the 2025 The Naked Gun reboot. Sonic movie veterans Neal H. Moritz and Toby Ascher will produce alongside Sega's Toru Nakahara.
There is suddenly a lot of Crazy Taxi
The movie arrives just as Sega is reviving the game itself. Crazy Taxi: World Tour is scheduled for 2027 on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.
That gives Netflix an unusually simple premise and a difficult adaptation problem at the same time. Crazy Taxi has an instantly recognizable personality — reckless driving, frantic passengers, punk energy and a yellow cab being treated like heavy machinery — but it was never built around a dense cinematic plot.
Gregor and Mand therefore have plenty of room. Possibly too much room.
Sonic gets another animated life
The partnership also includes a new Sonic animated series being developed by Carlos Stevens and Toru Nakahara. This one is aimed at an upper-preschool audience and will present Sonic and his friends as a heroic crew in a comedic, high-energy format.
It is separate from Sonic Prime, whose three seasons remain on Netflix. Sega is effectively placing different versions of Sonic in different corners of the entertainment market rather than waiting for one adaptation to finish before beginning another.
Stranger Than Heaven is getting a movie before players get the game
The boldest project may be Stranger Than Heaven. RGG Studio's new game is already being developed as a live-action Netflix film even though the game itself has not yet launched.
Set in early 20th-century Japan, its story follows a foreigner who rises from poverty to become a feared yakuza and eventually an entertainment magnate. Netflix says the film will offer a new lens on that world. Toru Nakahara is producing, while other creative details remain under wraps.
That means Netflix is not simply mining proven Sega hits. It is attaching itself to a property while Sega is still establishing it.
This is becoming a screen strategy rather than a Sonic side business
The three announced projects deliberately share very little beyond their publisher. Crazy Taxi is a live-action comedy, Sonic is children's animation and Stranger Than Heaven is positioned as live-action crime drama.
That range is the important part. Sega's post-Sonic strategy increasingly looks less like a hunt for one more successful adaptation and more like an attempt to turn decades of games into a reusable film and television catalog.
Netflix and Sega describe this as the beginning of the collaboration, not its full extent.