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KRAFTON announced on October 30, 2026 that its battle royale shooter PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS is being adapted into a live-action drama series for Netflix. Donald Glover is directing, writing, executive producing and starring. He has won two Emmys and two Golden Globes, and is just as well known as the musician Childish Gambino.
His brother Stephen Glover is also on board as a writer and executive producer. The series is being conceived, developed and produced by LV3H, KRAFTON’s entertainment division, with producers from NEON TV and Gilga also credited as executive producers. As of October 31, 2026, the release window, the rest of the cast and the episode count have not been announced.
So how do you turn a game about 100 people dropping onto an island to see who survives into an ongoing drama? This article breaks down the creative team as announced, what the choice of Donald Glover actually signals, and where PUBG sits in Netflix’s run of video game adaptations.
Let’s start with the official announcement.
Who is making the PUBG live-action series? Inside KRAFTON’s announcement
Here is the creative team. Donald Glover is handling four jobs by himself: director, writer, executive producer and lead actor.
| Role | Credited to |
|---|---|
| Director, writer, executive producer, lead actor | Donald Glover |
| Writer, executive producer | Stephen Glover |
| Executive producer | Michael Schaefer (NEON TV) |
| Executive producer | One producer from Gilga |
| Executive producer | Two producers from LV3H (KRAFTON) |
| Concept, development, production | LV3H (KRAFTON’s entertainment division) |
| Distribution | Netflix |
| Release window | Undecided as of October 31, 2026 |
KRAFTON JAPAN’s press release is deliberately narrow in its wording, stating only that the planning, development and production of a live-action drama series is underway at Netflix. It is an announcement that work has started, nothing more. Comments from Glover or from KRAFTON executives do not appear in the Japanese release at all.
The name worth noting here is LV3H. It is the division KRAFTON set up for entertainment business outside of games, and it is now the gateway for pushing the PUBG IP into live-action. A game company keeping a seat at the executive producer table through its own in-house division, rather than handing its IP off wholesale to an outside studio, is the same model behind Sega’s and Capcom’s recent adaptation deals.
Who is Donald Glover, and why PUBG?
Donald Glover, born in 1983, is an American actor, writer and musician. He broke through on the comedy series Community, then created, wrote and starred in Atlanta, which won him Emmys for directing and for lead actor. As a musician he records as Childish Gambino, and This Is America won him a Grammy.
On film he is best known as Lando Calrissian in Solo: A Star Wars Story and as the voice of Simba in the live-action remake of The Lion King. In 2024 he turned Mr. & Mrs. Smith into a series for Amazon, again producing, writing and starring. Write it himself, direct it himself, appear in it himself: that is his default mode, and PUBG is getting the exact same arrangement.
At a glance, battle royale as a premise and Glover’s style of work, all the conversational drift and surreal left turns of Atlanta, do not look like a match. But if the goal were a faithful recreation of the game, there would be no reason to hire him. What KRAFTON wants, I think, is the other thing: what a filmmaker with a real voice does inside the world of PUBG. There is no official statement on this, so take it as my read.
What would a PUBG drama actually be about?
As of October 31, 2026, nothing about the plot, setting or characters has been announced. PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS itself is a competitive game in which up to 100 players drop onto an island and fight inside a shrinking safe zone until one player, or one squad, is left. It has no fixed protagonist and no story.
Adapting an IP with no narrative means borrowing only its rules and writing a story from scratch. With Battle Royale, the novel and film that originated the genre, and The Hunger Games already out there, simply tracing the game’s premise would not distinguish this from anything else. That has to be the point of having Glover in the writers’ room.
KRAFTON has tried expanding the PUBG world before through spin-off projects such as PUBG: Black Budget. Given how much effort has gone into giving the games a story, the series may also end up locking down PUBG’s setting as official canon. That is still speculation on my part, so we wait for details.
When does it release, and where does it sit among Netflix’s game adaptations?
As of October 31, 2026, there is no official release window. The press release says details such as the broadcast timing are undecided, which rules out this year and does not even guarantee 2027.
Netflix’s game adaptations are usually discussed through their successes: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and Castlevania on the animation side, The Witcher in live-action, and The Last of Us over at HBO. Live-action series typically take two to three years to go from a development announcement to release, so somewhere around 2028 is the realistic line for PUBG. That is an estimate based on past projects, not an official figure.
The one concern is that productions where Glover directs, writes and stars tend to move slowly. Atlanta left a four-year gap between seasons two and three. The more deeply he is involved, the longer the wait, and it is worth bracing for that.
| Project | Source IP holder | Platform | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| PUBG (working title) | KRAFTON | Netflix | Live-action series, date TBD |
| Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 | CD PROJEKT RED | Netflix | Anime, releasing in 2026 |
| Crazy Taxi and others | Sega | Netflix | Adaptations under the Sega x Netflix deal |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | CD PROJEKT RED | Paramount | Live-action film, in development |
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The bottom line: the PUBG live-action series is Donald Glover’s show, and the release date is open
KRAFTON announced the Netflix live-action drama series adaptation of PUBG: BATTLEGROUNDS on October 30, 2026. Donald Glover directs, writes, executive produces and stars; Stephen Glover writes and executive produces; and KRAFTON’s LV3H handles concept and production. The release window, cast and plot have not been announced. Because the game has no story of its own, the series is expected to be written from scratch.
Go in expecting a faithful recreation of the game and you will come away empty-handed. If you want footage of 100 people shooting at each other, there is already a mountain of gameplay video. The moment KRAFTON called Donald Glover, what it ordered was a filmmaker’s work that happens to carry the PUBG name. The only real question left is how many years we spend waiting for it.
A battle royale from the guy who made This Is America. I cannot picture it, which is exactly why I want to watch it.
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