We got a bit of interesting news recently, as HBO announced it’ll produce a Baldur’s Gate TV show. Fans of the eponymous RPG franchise from Larian Studios were understandably stoked, but the flames of the hype (that…does sound like a BG spell, huh?) must be doused for now, since the studio that actually made the game will not take any part in the show.
At least, that’s what Michael Douse, Larian Studios’ Director of Publishing, has said over at X/Twitter:
Not like they plan to do anything about it, though, since Douse himself has nixed any possibility of stopping the show via, say, a lawsuit, like some fans suggested. In fact, Larian Studios’ CEO, Swen Vicke, joined the conversation, stating that despite not having anyone from his payroll involved in the show, Craig Mazin — who’ll be Baldur’s Gate’s showrunner at HBO — did reach out to him and he believes the man is a fan.
To make justice to Mazin’s resume, the man is one of the two minds behind the largely successful The Last of Us TV show, although the other mind is Neil Druckmann, the game’s main writer and head honcho at Naughty Dog studios, which makes the game.
Still, there will be a gaming connection there, as the TV show aims to tell stories that happened after the events of Baldur’s Gate 3 — will those be canon? No one can say, but BG3 does have multi;ple endings so Larian might treat that as “consequences” of one of them? We don’t know.
All I know is…I’m having a hard time picturing anyone portraying Astarion besides Neil Newbon. That role may be, for him, what Iron Man was to Robert Downey Jr, in my opinion. And I don’t think I’m alone in that statement.
Does a video game adaptation need someone from the game’s production team?
This all begs the question: does a TV show, or even a movie, based on a videogame series need someone from their team to consult, or write, or helm, or even participate in any meaningful way?
The average consumer of both media pillars would say yes — not only the aforementioned The Last of Us has it, but more recently, the award winning Fallout show also counts on Todd Howard and people from Bethesda Game Studios in its production.
In fact, we ran a “Best Video Game Adaptations” list in September, 2025 — one of which had many entries that had both active and no part at all from original studios. While examples like Arcane, which League of Legends’ Riot Games directly produced, there were other, funny situations like CD Projekt Red, which had a major part in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, but almost no part in The Witcher.
Is it a true, necessary element for success? Maybe, maybe not: Netflix’s Castlevania animation had no part from Konami and are still two of the most loved adaptations in modern day. On the other hand, that Borderlands movie is something a lot of gaming circles refuse to even acknowledge due to the lack of involvement from Gearbox.
