The Internet is a funny place where even the slightest line of text can become the source of hype for millions of people. This particular thing happened recently on LinkedIn where the president of Activision-Blizzard updated his LinkedIn profile and thus revealed two big projects cooking behind closed doors. Apparently, Blizzard is working on Overwatch and Diablo TV adaptations.
Nick van Dyk, President of Activision-Blizzard recently posted a short description on his LinkedIn profile of a new project listing his achievements. This is the exact text:
The executive producer of Diablo, a TV adaptation of Blizzard Entertainment’s IP, rendered in anime style. The show is currently in pre-production for distribution worldwide through Netflix.
With my creative partner, developed and sold an animated series based Blizzard’s Overwatch franchise.
Hello? When was it announced? Oh right… It wasn’t. This means that we should treat it as an official source – Nick van Dyk is the president after all.
To be fair, news about Overwatch TV adaptation has been a long time coming. There are plenty of animated shorts set in the world of Overwatch that were released previously. However, at some point, Blizzard stopped releasing their shorts on YouTube altogether, so fans took it as a sign of a bigger project being developed by the Blizzard Cinematic team.
On the other hand, Diablo is an entirely different beast. We certainly were not expecting a TV series based on the franchise. However, after pondering for some time – it makes sense. Diablo features a rich world full of weird demonic stories to tell. The franchise also could use a little boost from outside since Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal are yet to be released.