Netflix and A24 are teaming up to bring Overcooked, the manic cooperative cooking multiplayer game, to television. Their adaptation of Ghost Town Games’ frantic cook-’em-up franchise will arrive in the form of an unscripted competition series, Deadline reports.
The Overcooked TV show is said to be in the early stages of production. It will be A24’s first foray into reality competition series. Netflix has plenty in that content space, including Nailed It!, The Great British Baking Show, and Sugar Rush (plus multiple spinoffs of those shows), but Overcooked will reportedly distinguish itself with “high-stakes kitchen challenges and the signature chaos that made the video game a hit with fans,” Deadline says.
While Overcooked will be a first for A24 on the reality competition front, it won’t be the only video game adaptation the hot indie studio is working on. Movies based Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding and FromSoftware’s Elden Ring are in the works at A24.
The original Overcooked was released in 2016, and quickly became a hit, thanks to its chaotic, fast-paced cooking-and-serving restaurant action. The game tasks players with hastily preparing ingredients, cooking, and cleaning up, all while dealing with a flurry of orders, hazards like kitchen fires, and the short tempers of their fellow overworked chefs. Adding to the mania are the bizarre cooking environments: Chefs prep on moving trucks, on shifting ice floes, near lava, and even in outer space. A sequel, Overcooked 2, was released in 2018. It added new recipes and other twists on the four-player co-op play of the original.
If A24 and Netflix have the guts to send hopeful line cooks and chefs to space, or have them cook on a floating pirate ship, it sounds like Overcooked will be worth watching, not just playing. Hell, let wild animals cook too, just like the games. Let’s commit to the bit.
