is a game with a simple premise: What if you could travel back to medieval times with an M4 tank to give the primitive screwheads what-for? It looks like it might be fun, although it doesn't yet have a release date. What it does have, however—and somewhat bafflingly—is a movie deal.
"The action, world-building, and intriguing sci-fi of Kingmakers make it a perfect concoction to build a propulsive new franchise in Hollywood," Dmitri M. Johnson of Story Kitchen [[link]] said.
Okay, sure, but that's a lot of weight to put on a game that looks like a playable version of those YouTube videos that pit one Terminator against a million zombies. The page focuses primarily on Kingmakers' combat simulation and doesn't really get into the narrative at all, except to say that you're going back 500 years "to change the course of a bloody war and maybe, if you’re lucky, stave off the apocalypse."
On the other hand, you don't necessarily need George R.R. Martin on the script for this sort of thing to work. was based entirely on the premise, "What if a guy went back in time on a dirtbike?" rolled with little more than "What if a guy went back [[link]] in time with a shotgun?" Perhaps the most on-point example is the 1980 cinematic classic The Final Countdown, starring Kirk Douglas, Martin Sheen, Charles Durning, and Katharine Ross, which asked, "What if a guy went back in time with a nuclear-powered US aircraft carrier?"
That's not to say that Kingmakers is likely to make for a good movie. We don't even know if it's going to make for a good game at this point. But at least there's plenty of pre-existing material to take inspiration from.
Kingmakers—the game, not the movie—is slated to be out sometime later this year.