The Awesome Kitty Cyberpunk Video Game Adventure Stray Is Becoming An Animated Movie
There's no shortage of kickass cyberpunk movies out there, but these stories tend to be exclusively told from the perspective of humans adapting to a not-so-distant future filled with androids and lots of bisexual lighting (aka the blues, pinks, and purples of the retrowave aesthetic). Sure, it's cool to see how lone-wolf adults adjust to a world like "Blade Runner," but what about families with children? What about rural areas far from overpopulated cities with a lack of resources? What about beloved family pets? In 2022, BlueTwelve Studio and Annapurna Interactive flipped the script and pivoted to an unconventional protagonist in a cyberpunk environment: an adorably stealthy cat in the adventure game "Stray."
The game has players taking on the role of a stray cat who ends up in a walled-off city filled with robots and mutant bacteria. With the help of a friendly drone companion named B-12, you as the cat must evade the antagonistic Zurks and Sentinels which want you dead, solve puzzles, and try to escape the city. "Stray" is a fantastic game for fans of cyberpunk environments (and cats) and it was announced today by Entertainment Weekly that in the wake of the success of "Nimona," Annapurna Animation is going to adapt "Stray" for the big screen with "Ice Age" helmer Chris Wedge and "Nimona" co-director Nick Bruno in the director's chairs. As Annapurna Animation lead Robert Baird told EW, "This is a game that's all about what makes us human, and there are no humans in it." Baird described the story as a "buddy comedy" about a cat and a robot, which sounds like a Mad Libs combination crafted to specifically appease geeks like yours truly.
From cyberpunk to hopepunk
Robert Baird said that he's aware that part of the game's popularity is the ability to see the world through the eyes of a cat, which was definitely a huge selling point for me and many others who played the game. Shifting perspective is one of the fastest ways to add a new level of intrigue to any story. I may not be a cop in Detroit a la "RoboCop," but I can relate to the perspective of being a Midwestern adult in a police state. I cannot, however, relate to being a cat. I've never navigated the world being that small or nimble, and certainly never that cute.
"How did they pull that off, and how are we going to pull that off in the movie?" pondered Baird. "We will, even though sometimes it feels impossible, but we know that's the essence of the game and the key to telling the story." What has me most interested, however, is Baird's explanation that BlueTwelve considers the game to be "hopepunk," or the idea that optimism can be its own from of resistance. "I love that term, hopepunk," he told EW. "I think, if we are going to do this adaptation justice, this is going to be the first and greatest hopepunk movie that's ever been made."
"Stray" is the first of hopefully many Annapurna Interactive adaptations, and the performance of the film will likely dictate whether or not we see film adaptations of their other games like "Twelve Minutes," "Florence, If Found...," "Journey," or upcoming games like "Cocoon," "Thirsty Suitors," or "Blade Runner 2033: Labyrinth."