Two Sundays ago, I booted up my PlayStation 5 excited to watch a new, previously unreleased chapter from Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” saga. But instead of opening up Amazon, Netflix, YouTube or any of the dozen streamers that live on my PlayStation, I opened Fortnite. That’s because for the first time in the history of the free-to-play cross-platform game, Fortnite was the launch platform for this exclusive new Tarantino short.
You heard that right. Oscar-winning, indie trailblazing auteur Quentin Tarantino and Fortnite, the shooter video game that has Gen Alpha (and beyond) enthralled.
The unlikely pairing is the latest example of Hollywood cozying up to the video game industry. Last year, Disney announced a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite. Two of the highest-grossing movies of the past few years — Universal Pictures’ “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and Warner Bros.’ “A Minecraft Movie” — were based on beloved games as are two of the biggest shows on TV, Prime Video’s “Fallout” and HBO’s “The Last of Us.”
But this year in particular, the two industries have gotten even closer. Fortnite’s “Kill Bill” short came on the heels of its “Simpsons” season of gameplay, an intense gaming integration that completely remodeled Fortnite’s main “Battle Royale” to look like Springfield, added in “Simpsons”-inspired weapons and included specialized animated shorts from “The Simpsons” team. Fortnite, which averaged 31.5 million daily active users in 2024, also released major integrations with “Star Wars,” “Stranger Things” and “KPop Demon Hunters” this year.
As for Roblox, another major player in the world of gaming that averages 152 million daily active users, this summer the company changed its licensing manager to allow Roblox creators to make games using IP from major studios like Netflix and Lionsgate. Its “Squid Game”-inspired “Ink Game” has been played over 2.6 billion times.
On the flip side, the viewership for NFL games — a sporting event that’s largely considered to be one of TV’s biggest and most reliable advertising events — averaged 18.58 million viewers in 2024.
As Hollywood’s box office struggles to claw back to pre-pandemic levels, linear TV is cratering and advertisers attempt to find any kind of mass-audience event to market their wares, video games are increasingly becoming a go-to destination for traditional entertainment studios. Integrations, collaborations and even custom games have become key to growing awareness — especially with younger generations — for movies as varied as “Sinners” and “One Battle After Another” and shows as massive as “Stranger Things.” Everyone in town is clamoring for a piece of the pie, and gaming companies that are always looking for fresh content are more than happy to collaborate.
“What’s a little bit different now is that video games have established themselves as more of a mature medium,” Amanda Cote, an associate professor who specializes in games at Michigan State University, told TheWrap.
There is a growing respect between these two verticals that hasn’t been seen before that’s coming just as younger generations are spending more of their time playing. Nearly 75% of Gen Z is expected to engage in some form of digital gaming by 2027, according to eMarketer. While Newzoo estimates that Gen Z spends 17% of their free time playing, Gen Alpha’s gaming time is estimated to be that generation’s top source of entertainment, accounting for 21% of leisure time.
“If we are not connecting and offering this digital playground for people to connect and experience things together, then we’re going to be seen as a very old medium in a few years,” Alain Tascan, president of games at Netflix, told TheWrap, noting that it is “paramount” for entertainment companies these days to embrace gaming (no pun intended).
For studios, working with gaming companies like Roblox and Fortnite presents a huge advantage. Instead of developing a new game from the ground up — a process that can take years and millions of dollars (just ask long-suffering fans of the eagerly anticipated “Grand Theft Auto VI”) — media companies can partner with developers that can program tie-in gaming content faster, ensuring that an interactive experience is released at the height of a title’s popularity. This can also ensure that a title remains relevant in pop culture outside of release windows. On the flip side, IP-branded collaborations entice more players and content creators to engage with these games, driving social media impressions and daily usage.
“It’s such a win across all the stakeholders involved,” Ashray Urs, head of the live streaming-focused Streamlabs, told TheWrap.
How Tarantino came to Fortnite
Historically, new seasons of Fortnite — called Chapters — have been introduced with big concerts. But since November’s Chapter 7 was set in Hollywood, the team wanted to launch it with a buzzy premiere from an esteemed filmmaker. Around March, Epic approached Tarantino and asked if he had an eight to 12-minute project that could work as an in-game short. That’s how “Yuki’s Revenge” finally saw the light of day.
“Yuki’s Revenge” was part of the original version of “Kill Bill” but was cut because of the movie’s runtime and for being too expensive.
“The only reason I didn’t do it is because we couldn’t do it,” Tarantino said during a Fortnite event TheWrap attended ahead of the premiere. “It was just too much action.” Now, with Tarantino’s four-and-a-half-hour “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” hitting theaters for the first time courtesy of Lionsgate, the timing was perfect.
The team recruited Thurman to reprise her role as The Bride and cast Miyu Ishidate Roberts as Yuki, the erratic and vengeful sister of Gogo Yubari, who (spoiler alert) Thurman’s character kills in the film. The Fortnite version does contain several changes you would never expect in a Tarantino film. The side characters are played by in-game characters, like Peely, a human-sized walking banana. Also, instead of dying from a drug overdose like in the original script, Yuki dies after consuming too many shield potions from the game. But the T-for-teen-rated Fortnite version follows the director’s original vision.
“This is not me coming up with something cool to take advantage of the situation,” Tarantino said. “This is a lost chapter I always wanted to see the light of day, and now it has.”
The “Kill Bill” integration hit all the markers Fortnite aims for when it comes to its more intense collaborations. Tarantino’s bloody and stylized revenge epic overlapped with the game’s core audience and made for suitable gameplay. At the same time, controlling Thurman’s blade-wielding Bride delivered on a player fantasy.
Though the Tarantino event is the first time Fortnite used a piece of scripted content to start a season, it continues a history of the gaming platform working with top filmmakers. In 2020, the game debuted the trailer for Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated film “Tenet,” providing a unique way to market the sci-fi thriller while theaters were still closed. Throughout that summer, Nolan and Warner Bros. continued to utilize Fortnite, playing full movies – “Inception,” “Batman Begins” and “The Prestige” – inside the game.
Now integrations for new movies of all shapes and sizes are commonplace. A24 leveraged Fortnite to market its 2023 horror film “Talk to Me,” about a group of teens whose seance game goes very wrong. Inside Fortnite, players entered a haunted house just like the one in the film while billboards for the movie showed up throughout the video game. The indie movie — which A24 picked up out of Sundance — was a hit, grossing $92 million at the worldwide box office.
And just this past year, Warner Bros. collaborated with Fortnite on several very different movies. “Superman” was a no-brainer (a David Corenswet Superman skin, yes please!), but Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” had a survival game inserted into Fortnite ahead of its release, and Zach Cregger’s original horror film “Weapons” launched an integration that played up the mysterious nature of the marketing, inviting players to find clues tied to the movie. Both films were box office hits – $367 million for “Sinners” and $268 million for “Weapons” – and are in the awards conversation, further proving that there’s no negative stigma attached to a Fortnite collaboration.
To wit: Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” arguably the frontrunner in several Oscar categories this year, including Best Picture, had a full-on gameplay experience in Fortnite in which players entered re-creations of locations from the movie and played special missions as Leonardo DiCaprio and Teyona Taylor’s characters (a pregnant Perfidia, to boot) that tied directly to the story of PTA’s movie.
A boost in brand recognition
When Fortnite introduces a new jam track — the game’s name for a music track — that song typically sees a 8–9% increase in plays the following week on Spotify. Because data tracking is more nebulous when it comes to TV and film, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly how much a successful gaming integration increases viewership. But there is reason to believe there is a positive impact.
“We know that the people playing the [‘Peppa Pig’] game engage even more with the show,” Tascan said, using one of Netflix’s popular games as an example of how it correlates with watch-time on the streamer. “It’s not an exact science now, but we believe it reinforces the connection to the brand.”
On Roblox, the platform has seen a lift in monetization and play time for games attached to popular IP. Both the previously mentioned “Ink Game” and the “Attack on Titan” game “Attack on Titan Revolution,” based on the hit anime, are among the platform’s top earners. Though the company declined to say how much each game makes, the top 1,000 Roblox creators average earning $1 million a year, and the top 10 creators average $36 million a year. And thanks to Roblox’s license manager, Roblox, studios and creators all receive a financial cut of successful games based on IP.
“Popular titles, like ‘Ink Game’ are doing billions and billions of visits,” Todd Lichten, head of entertainment partnerships for Roblox, told TheWrap. “All those things are definitely driving positive revenue for the studios as well as marketing and awareness for the IP.”
Lichten also sees Roblox’s license manager as a solution for the arduous task of game development. Instead of sinking millions into a project that could potentially flop like Warner Bros. Discovery’s doomed “Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League” — a shooter that resulted in a $200 million loss for WBD — the license manager lets creators who understand the platform and its playerbase to quickly build brand-approved experiences. At this point creators can build games using IP from over 13 different companies that have partnered with Roblox.
That nimbleness is especially crucial when it comes to responding to surprise hits like Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters.” When the animated movie premiered on June 20, no one suspected that it would become the most popular movie Netflix had ever released. But as soon as its growing success was apparent, Netflix started working with Fortnite on a collaboration. Roughly three months later, fans were able to play as Rumi, Mira and Zoey in the game, and Fortnite unveiled a “KPop” demon-slaying mode that used music from the movie. That quick turnaround could have never happened if Netflix didn’t have a gaming partner like Fortnite.
“We had a few phone calls, they sent us a lot of concepts, and we went very quickly to approve everything,” Tascan said. “They’ve done a spectacular job at an amazing speed.”
That speed is crucial to Fortnite’s model. Though studios have told the company their big titles all the way through 2028, Fortnite doesn’t typically start working on bigger activations like “Kill Bill” until about nine months in advance. The company also has multiple teams working on different activations at all times to ensure something new is always in the pipeline.
“We want to be as reactive as we can in the moment to what’s trending in culture,” Nanzer said. ”We want to work on these IPs when they’re at their peak relevancy in culture.”
A never-ending loop of new content
Ultimately, it’s that reactivity that has kept Fortnite and Roblox on top. New content typically leads to more players logging on, more creators posting their streams and more engagement on social media — streams that then loop around to entice more players.
For example, Fortnite’s “Simpsons” season took place throughout the month of November. Though “Simpsons” has yet to appear on Nielsen’s list of the most-watched titles for the month, in the first 48 hours of the collaboration, the initial “Simpsons” and Fortnite short was the No. 1 program on Disney+. Additionally, those first two days saw the biggest number of new and returning Fortnite players since the 2024 holiday season.
That month also saw a 112% increase in Fortnite streams compared to October, according to data from Streamlabs, as well as a 25% increase in streams from 2024. As for Roblox, the introduction of its license manager was followed by a 18% monthly increase in streams and a 17% year-over-year increase. That interactive component is vital. Many people who play these games or follow gaming streamers consider themselves to be part of a community rather than passively consuming an experience. That digital connection to others encourages gamers to keep playing and watching.
“When you look at these games, they really have become much bigger than what we traditionally thought of as games,” Uhrs said. “They’re very much platforms unto themselves.”
And this is just the beginning. A new “KPop Demon Hunters” roleplaying game will soon be coming to Roblox created by veteran developer Twin Atlas. Both Fortnite and Roblox have also seen increased interest this year from studios looking to partner with them. Nanzer also noted he’s had more conversations about how Fortnite can operate as a storytelling platform.
“From a demographic standpoint, the younger users are [invested in gaming]. They’re ready to go. And so as they change the economy and everything else, we’re on the verge of very cool things,” Urs said.
Adam Chitwood and JD Knapp contributed reporting for this story.
